Sumaiya Khair
Professor, Department of Law
University of Dhaka
Email: skhair@gmail.com

Sumaiya Khair is a Professor at the Department of Law, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, where she served as Head of the Department from 2009 to 2011. She has a PhD from the United Kingdom, where she also studied as a Commonwealth Post-Doctoral Academic Fellow.

Her areas of interest and research include human rights, humanitarian law, child rights, legal empowerment, refugees & migration, anti-corruption and governance, labour standards, and gender issues.

She writes on law, justice, human rights, and governance, and has to her credit several publications in national and international journals and books. She is a regular contributor to the Asian Yearbook of International Law, where she writes on “State Practice of International Law: Bangladesh” every year.

Her latest academic publication is on the Implementation of Sustainable Development in the Global South. Strategies, Innovations, and Challenges, Hart Publishing, Oxford et al., 2024 [Sumaiya Khair, Shawkat Alam and Muhammad Ekramul Haque (eds.). Open access

https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph?docid=b-9781509963782].

She was the Editor of the Dhaka University Law Journal, Centennial Special Issue, 2021, ISSN 2790-1807, E-ISSN 2790-1815.  She is also Editor of the biannual Dhaka University Law Journal from January 2023 to date.

Since 2017, Professor Khair has served as Adviser, Executive Management at Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB), an accredited chapter of Berlin-based Transparency International. Previously, she took leave from the University to work as TIB’s Deputy Executive Director from 2013-2017.

Professor Khair has been a Member of the Judicial Appointments Council, the Supreme Court of Bangladesh, since 18 February 2025 to date. She served as a Member of the Constitutional Reform Commission formed by the Interim Government from 6 October 2024 to 15 February 2025.

She is the Ombudsperson for the implementation of the Sexual Harassment Redressal Policy of GIZ, Dhaka. She is an external member of the Committee for the Prevention of Sexual Harassment at the University of Liberal Arts (ULAB), Dhaka. She sits on the governing boards of several development and research organisations in Bangladesh, where she provides strategic advice on policy, programmes, fundraising, and operations.