Bio

I am a historian at the National University of Singapore. I specialize in legal history, histories of Southeast Asia, Islamic law, mobilities, and the Indian Ocean. I received my PhD in History at Princeton University in 2012. Between 2012 and 2015, I was the Mark Steinberg Weil Early Career Fellow in Islamic Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. My book Fluid Jurisdictions: Colonial Law and Arabs in Southeast Asia is published by Cornell University Press. My second book will be on the history of land reclamation in the British Empire. I have published in Journal of Women’s History, Law and History Review, Muslim World and Indonesia and the Malay World. I currently serve on the editorial boards of Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Journal of Global History and Journal of Indian Ocean World Studies.

I can be reached at hisny@nus.edu.sg and I tweet here. Here’s my latest CV.