msh

Academic interests

• International refugee law
• Refugees
• Legal history
• International Criminal Law
• Constitutional Law

M Sanjeeb Hossain is a Researcher at the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law. Over the past decade, his research and writing have revolved around themes in international refugee law, international criminal law, constitutional law, legal history, and politics. Hossain is known for his scholarship on refugee protection in Bangladesh, particularly relating to the Rohingya people, and the battle against impunity in the context of international crimes committed against the Bengali populace during Bangladesh’s 1971 Liberation War.

With a two-year-long research scholarship from the Gerda Henkel Foundation, Hossain has returned to IKRS at the University of Oslo, where he is the Principal Investigator of a research project titled “Swaying Between Acceptance and Rejection: Lessons on the Principle of Non-Refoulement from South Asia (1971-2017)”. Under this project, Hossain shall examine state responses to the mass displacement of refugees in two non-signatory states of the 1951 Refugee Convention, namely India and Bangladesh, with a focus on state adherence to the principle of non-refoulement. Additionally, as part of Professor Maja Janmyr’s BEYOND project, Hossain will be writing a journal article titled “The Incidental Organic Evolution of Refugee Protection: How Bangladesh’s courts internalised non-refoulement”.

Beyond the abovementioned projects, Hossain is most well-known as the Principal Investigator of a research project titled “Towards Mitigating the Precarious Status of the Rohingya People in Bangladesh”, jointly funded by the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) and The Asia Foundation (TAF), under which Hossain and his team at the Centre for Peace and Justice (CPJ) at BRAC University drafted a Model Law for refugees in Bangladesh. He is also a Co-Investigator on a project funded by The British Academy, “Politics of Denial and Non-Recognition of Genocide”.

Background

Hossain studied law, criminology and criminal justice at BRAC (LLB, 2010), Oxford (MSc, 2011) and Warwick (PhD, 2018). He joined the Warwick Law School in 2013 as a Commonwealth Scholar to pursue doctoral studies. Before returning to IKRS at the University of Oslo as a Researcher in 2025, Hossain served full-time as the first Director of Research at the Centre for Peace and Justice (CPJ) at BRAC University (2023 - ), a position he still holds in a part-time and remote capacity. Before joining CPJ, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oslo and a Teaching Fellow at the University of Warwick Law School. In Oslo, as part of the Horizon 2020 project ASILE from 2020 to 2023, Hossain’s research focused on the Rohingya refugee situation in Bangladesh through the prism of status, vulnerabilities and the right to work. Before Oslo, between 2017 and 2020, Hossain taught Criminal Law, Constitutional Law, International Humanitarian Law, and Armed Conflict at the Warwick Law School, first as a Sessional Tutor and then as a Teaching Fellow.

Hossain is a Member of the Advisory Board of Professor Maja Janmyr’s ERC-funded BEYOND project and the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission Alumni Advisory Panel, which is one of the most senior positions an alumnus can hold within the CSC Alumni Network. He is also a Research Affiliate of the Refugee Law Initiative (RLI) of the School of Advanced Study, University of London.

Awards

• Quality Journal Publication Prize 2025, BRAC University
• Commonwealth Scholarship 2013
• Vice-Chancellor’s Gold Medal 2010
• ‘Best Advocate’ 5th Henry Dunant Memorial Regional Moot Court Championship 2009
• ‘National Champions’ 5th Henry Dunant Memorial National Moot Court Championship 2009