Mark Fathi Massoud
Professor of Politics and Legal Studies · UC Santa Cruz
Mark Fathi Massoud is professor and chair of politics and the director of legal studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Most recently, Massoud was a Senior Research Scholar at Yale Law School (Fall 2023), a Berlin Prize fellow at the American Academy in Berlin (Spring 2024), and a Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford Centre for Socio-Legal Studies (2021-2024).
Research Interests
Massoud studies how people build and destroy nations, why and how they create legal systems, and why religion matters in politics. His primary methods include historical and archival research, ethnographic fieldwork, and interviews.
He is the author of two books. Shari’a, Inshallah: Finding God in Somali Legal Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2021) shows the remarkable ways that the Somali people have invoked God to oppose colonialism, resist dictators, expel warlords, fight for gender equality, and build a path to the rule of law. It is based on research in Somalia and Somaliland and earned seven book awards.
Law’s Fragile State: Colonial, Authoritarian, and Humanitarian Legacies in Sudan (Cambridge University Press, 2013) challenges the assumptions that a legal order does not exist in so-called failed states and that legal tools intrinsically serve to promote democracy and human rights. It is based on research in Sudan and South Sudan and earned two book awards.
Massoud is also co-editor of Out of Place: Fieldwork and Positionality in Law and Society (Cambridge University Press, 2024). Drawing on the experiences of a globally diverse group of law and society scholars, this book argues that calls to embrace positionality benefit scholarship but burden researchers themselves.
He is currently writing a book with Kathleen M. Moore (UC Santa Barbara) about religion, law, and ethics in the United States, derived from their collaborative Shari’a Revoiced project.
SHARI’A, INSHALLAH
⭐ CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title
⭐ DISTINGUISHED BOOK AWARD, Sociology of Religion, American Sociological Association
⭐ RALPH J. BUNCHE AWARD, American Political Science Association
⭐ HART SLSA BOOK PRIZE, Socio-Legal Studies Association
⭐ RELIGION AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS BOOK AWARD, International Studies Association
⭐ BKFS PRIZE for best book in Middle East Studies
⭐ FINALIST, PROSE AWARD for best book in government and politics, Association of American Publishers
Western analysts have long denigrated Islamic states as antagonistic, even antithetical, to the rule of law. Mark Fathi Massoud tells a different story: for nearly 150 years, the Somali people have embraced shari’a, commonly translated as Islamic law, in the struggle for national identity and human rights. Massoud upends the conventional account of secular legal progress and demonstrates instead how faith in a higher power guides people toward the rule of law.
Book trailer by Erick Msumanje
Born in Sudan and raised in California, Massoud is a first-generation university graduate educated at Notre Dame (BA/MA) and Berkeley (JD/PhD). He has held Carnegie, Guggenheim, and Mellon Foundation fellowships, and visiting positions at Oxford, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale. He has given the Reza Banakar Memorial Lecture in Sweden and the Evans-Pritchard Lectures at All Souls College, Oxford.
Massoud chairs the UC Santa Cruz Politics Department and directs the Legal Studies Program. He is an editor of the Cambridge Studies in Law and Society book series. He is the secretary-elect and a past trustee of the Law and Society Association, and he serves on the Steering Committee of the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation.
Mark Fathi Massoud (he/هو)
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