6th Asian Legal History Conference
Melaka, Malaysia,
6–7 August 2026
Call for Abstracts
The Faculty of Law, Multimedia University, Malaysia is organizing the Sixth Asian Legal History Conference in Melaka, Malaysia on 6–7 August 2026. The conference is supported by the Asian Legal History Association. Previous Asian Legal History Conferences have been hosted, organized and supported by the University of Law at Hue University, the Faculty of Law at Thammasat University, the Centre for Asian Legal Studies at the National University of Singapore, the Faculty of Law at Doshisha University in Japan, and the Faculty of Law at The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
The conference aims to bring together a diverse, interdisciplinary group of scholars, researchers and graduate students to share their research findings on topics relating to legal history in Asia.
Submissions on any subject, providing they relate to legal history and fall into at least one of the categories specified below, will be considered. Among other themes, the organizers encourage papers on subjects such as:
- The historical evolution of common law, civil law, and socialist law traditions
- The history of law and empire
- The history of international law
- Transnational connections in legal history
- The history of law, gender and sexuality
- Legal pluralism and jurisdictional clashes
- Customary law and religious law
- The history of law schools and of the formation of the judiciary and of members of the legal profession.
The conference will be in person. Applicants will be responsible for their own transportation and accommodation costs.
Proposals may be for individual papers or panels. Panel proposals are particularly welcome, as the field of legal history is wide, and while the organizers will endeavor to cluster like papers together, thematic, geographic and temporal diversity of topics inevitably means panels composed of individually-submitted papers will cover only loosely-related subject matters.
Individual abstract proposals should include a 150-300 word abstract and the corresponding author’s contact information. These should be submitted through a Microsoft Form at https://forms.office.com/r/SjKfUUzBfg.
In addition, participants may make a panel proposal. Panel proposals should include a 150–300 word description of the panel, and the title of 3 to 5 individual papers, contact information for the panel chair. The abstract for the 3 to 5 individual papers in a designated panel need to be submitted through the Microsoft Form above: https://forms.office.com/r/SjKfUUzBfg.
Applications are due by midnight (Malaysia time) on 1 April 2026.
Decisions on acceptance of proposals will be made on a rolling basis. Interested parties are advised to submit a proposal as early as possible.
The venue of the conference will be in the city of Melaka, Malaysia and the registration fee will be informed later.
Full paper will be published in the Asian Journal of Law and Policy (MyCite-indexed) and other journals.
Further information and clarifications may be obtained by email to alhc2026@mmu.edu.my.