Former Robbins Postdoctoral and Associate Research Fellow Lena Salaymeh returned to UC Berkeley Law as a Robbins Visiting Professor for the Spring 2024 semester where she taught a popular course on Islamic Law. Speaking on her experience with the course, Salaymeh said “We began with introductory sessions on Islamic legal history and orthodox Islamic jurisprudence, then delved into colonialism and contemporary Islamic law—particularly, international law and governance.” She explained further that the course attempted to balance broad overviews of the who, what, when, where, and why of Islamic law with specific case studies as well as an analysis of Islamic legal reasoning. Salaymeh found Berkeley Law students to be very engaged with the course topics and active in course discussions.
Professor Salaymeh is a British Academy Global Professor in the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies and Director of the Section des Sciences Religieuses of the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. She is the co-organizer of the Decolonial Comparative Law Project at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and Private International Law in Hamburg. She received a Guggenheim fellowship for her first book, The Beginnings of Islamic Law: Late Antique Islamicate Legal Traditions which was published in 2016.
By bringing professors like Lena Salaymeh to teach courses at Berkeley Law as Robbins Visiting Professors, the Robbins Collection and Research Center continues its mission of promoting further study in the fields of civil, comparative, and religious law through enriching the next generation of legal minds.