The Faculty of Law’s Professor Anver M. Emon, a world-leading scholar of Islamic law, is one of six University of Toronto researchers appointed to the notable Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists. In total, the College named 70 scholars to its academy today, in recognition of an emerging generation of outstanding scholarly, scientific and artistic leadership in Canada.
The College cited Emon’s “significant contributions to understanding the relation between Islamic law and other legal traditions, with ground-breaking studies of its relation to natural law theories, human rights law and religious pluralism.”
Emon, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Religion, Pluralism and the Rule of Law called induction to the College “an honour. It means a lot to know that my colleagues see value in the scholarship that I’ve done,” he said.
The recipient of numerous research grants, Emon was named a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow in the field of law, a prestigious award where more than 100 recipients have gone on to receive a Nobel Prize, and a received a prominent U of T Connaught Fund grant in 2013 for the Summer Institute on Islamic Studies, a partnership between the Faculty of Law and Emmanuel College.
Emon is regularly cited by national and international media, worked on a law and social work student-led project that drafted a high school curriculum addressing forced marriage, and included a visit to Toronto’s gay-friendly mosque, one of the very few in the world to minister openly to gay and lesbian Muslims, as part of the nine-day Summer Institute.
In addition to publishing numerous articles and books, he is the founding editor of Middle East Law and Governance: An Interdisciplinary Journal, and series editor of the Oxford Islamic Legal Studies Series.
In 2014, the Royal Society of Canada society launched a special college to recognize and encourage leadership and interdisciplinary collaboration among Canada’s “new” generation of scholars, artists and scientists, with a focus on those who received their PhD within the last 15 years, have already received recognition for their scholarly excellence and have served as ambassadors of their fields.
