Dr Tuba Azeem
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Dr Tuba Azeem
Religious Studies Programme - Mātai Wairuataka
University of Otago - Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka
Legal historian and socio‑legal researcher. My work is people‑centred.
My work focuses on how marginalised communities understand and articulate claims over property, identity, and belonging. Across my work, people are treated not as background to law or institutions, but as central sources of legal knowledge encountered through archives, empirical data, legal practice, and policy engagement.
I am currently an Assistant Research Fellow in the Religion Programme, University of Otago, working on the Muslim Diversity Study, a national longitudinal project addressing the underrepresentation of Muslim communities in quantitative data on identity, discrimination, wellbeing, and social attitudes in Aotearoa New Zealand.
I completed my PhD in Law at the Victoria University of Wellington. My doctoral research examined the longue durée of property, in the Balochistan region (spanning Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Arabian Sea), drawing on archival records and field‑based insights to foreground occupational groups and ethnic minorities within pre-colonial, colonial, and post‑colonial contexts.
Research approach
My work operates across four interconnected modes:
- Legal history (archival reconstruction of claims over time)
- Empirical research (contemporary documentation of identity and belonging)
- Legal practice (engagement with lived encounters of law)
- Policy translation (bridging research with decision‑making)
Across all four, my central concern is how people navigate, contest, and reshape policy and law.
Current projects
- Muslim Diversity Study (MDS) – identity, discrimination, wellbeing, and social attitudes among Muslims in New Zealand
- Negotiating Territory, Power and Property in Makran (1862–2021) – legal‑historical research on people, property, and power