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Dr Tanzil Chowdhury, BA (Hons), MPhil, PhD (University of Manchester)

Tanzil

Senior Lecturer in Public Law

Email: Tanzil.Chowdhury@qmul.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7882 7232
Room Number: Mile End

Profile

Tanzil Chowdhury is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) of Public Law at Queen Mary University of London and the Co-Director for the Centre for the Critique of Law and Society (CCLAS). He researches and writes on public law and constitutional reform, drawing on marxist and materialist social theory. He has previously written on British Overseas Territories constitutionalism, war powers, and legal temporalities.

Having graduated with his PhD as the President’s Doctoral Scholar from the University of Manchester, Tanzil then worked as a Research Fellow at Birmingham Law School, where he assisted on a report examining key provisions of Gibraltar’s 2006 Constitution for the Territory’s Parliamentary Select Committee on Constitutional Reform.

Tanzil has held visiting positions at The New School (New York), New York Law School (New York), Hong Kong University (Hong Kong), Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University (Paris), Cardozo Law School (New York City), and the Université Catholique de Lille (Paris). In 2026, he will begin as a visiting fellow at Australian National University Law School.  

Tanzil was one of several inaugural Fellows for Friends Of Birzeit University (now Friends of Palestinian Universities) and established a research partnership with the Institute of Law, Birzeit University in Palestine.

Before beginning his job at Queen Mary, Tanzil was a development worker that helped to set up the Greater Manchester Law Centre and was a co-founder of the Northern Police Monitoring Project.

Undergraduate Teaching

  • LAW4001 Public Law
  • LAW6021 Jurisprudence and Legal Theory
  • Queen Mary-Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University Jurisprudence and Legal theory

Tanzil has also taught EU Law, Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights, and Constitutional Reform.

Research

Tanzil's work is in the fields of law and political economy, with a particular focus on Marxist jurisprudence and constitutional/administrative law. His current book project develops a historical materialist exegesis of changing constitutionalism in Britain over the last century. This builds of his previous work on developing materialist theories of constitutionalism and constitutional reform.

Tanzil recently co-edited a book titled Legal Workers Inquiry, the first ever workers’ inquiry of the British legal sector. His first monograph was titled ‘Time, Temporality and Legal Judgment’ and he maintains an interest in the ‘temporal turn’ in socio-legal studies and legal theory.

His previous work examined the dispossession of the Chagos Archipelago, which reframes it as an example of primitive accumulation. He has also written on war powers, British Overseas Territories constitutionalism.

Publications

Books

Journal articles

Chapters in books

Book reviews

Other Articles and Video

Consultations/Commissions/Submissions

  • (with Bethany Shiner) Response to the Joint Committee of Human Rights call for evidence on the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill.
  • Commissioned by the Stuart Hall Foundation to write for the Black Cultural Activism Map (2018).
  • (with H. Yusuf) ‘The Case for Constitutional Reform in Gibraltar: Peace, Order and Good Government Powers, External Affairs & Entrustment Agreements’, (Research Fellow assisting on report commissioned by the Gibraltar Parliamentary Select Committee on Constitutional Review).
  • Consultant for JUSTICE, ‘Innovations in personally-delivered advice: surveying the landscape’ (2018).
  • Consultant for Deyika Nzeribe manifesto on Police and Policing, Green Party candidate for Greater Manchester Mayoral Campaign (2017).

Supervision

Tanzil is interested in supervising prospective doctoral candidates with an interest in Law and Marxism, law and political economy, and critical approaches to (public) law.

He currently supervises two doctoral students, Luiza Tavares da Motta and Fernando Quintana.

Public Engagement

Tanzil was a co-founder of the Northern Police Monitoring Project and helped set up the Greater Manchester Law Centre. He currently sits on the Board of Advisors for the Independent Workers of Great Britain (IWGB) and is an committee member of the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust’s Rights and Justice team, overseeing their education program. He formerly sat on the National Executive Committee of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers. Tanzil previously worked in the Pro Bono Offices of Singapore’s Subordinate courts, and has spent much time on twinning and teaching projects in the Occupied Palestine Territories. He maintains a commitment to community-oriented and grass roots projects.

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