Welcome to the Faculty: Seyed Zavarei
September 11, 2026
By David Murphy
About Seyed Zavarei
UVic Law is proud to welcome Seyed Zavarei to the faculty as an assistant professor. Professor Zavarei will teach Contracts and Insurance Law at UVic Law this year.
Professor Zavarei comes to UVic Law with experience working as in-house counsel, in private practice, and within the judicial system, across both civil law and common law jurisdictions. His expertise is in private law theory, legal history and Islamic law.
Professor Zavarei’s broader work explores how legal ideas travel across traditions, and what gets lost—or transformed—in the process. Currently a doctoral candidate at McGill, his dissertation The Foundation of Contracts in the Classical Islamic Tradition addresses questions about the nature of contractual obligations in classical Islamic legal tradition.
Q&A
Welcome to UVic Law! Can you tell us about yourself?
About 16 years ago I stepped into a law school classroom for the first time and felt instantly that this was where I belonged. Since then, I have practiced across civil and common law jurisdictions, in firms, the court system and in-house. I remained a student myself for nearly the entire journey because I just love being surrounded by people who genuinely care about law and are willing to sit with its hardest questions.
What experiences in your career stand out as meaningful, and how have they shaped you?
It's hard to single out one thing. But I think serving as a senior editor of the McGill Law Journal stands out. I saw firsthand how much careful effort goes into shaping scholarship into something rigorous and readable. More broadly, though, the diversity I encountered in my education, especially in Canada, left a lasting impression. It’s one thing to believe diversity matters. It’s another to actually live inside it and feel how much it changes you.
How do you plan to bring your expertise and perspective to your role at UVic Law?
My own research started from getting something wrong and having to rebuild how I thought about it entirely. I want that attitude to shape how I engage with students. Especially when they bring knowledge I don’t have, whether that's Indigenous, other non-Western traditions or something I’ve just never encountered before.
What is your approach to teaching, and what can students expect from taking your class?
What I hope students take from my classes is a habit of critical thinking paired with mutual toleration: the ability to genuinely listen to ideas, however different or strange they sound, and think them through; along with the instinct to ask which assumptions are quietly shaping the conclusion in any argument. This is a constant effort for me too. I go into the classroom to learn as much as I teach.
What excites you most about joining UVic Law?
There is so much that excites me about joining UVic Law and it’s hard to choose just one. But if I had to, it would be UVic’s genuine institutional commitment to social justice and legal pluralism. And, I’ll admit the new Indigenous Law Wing made a real impression on me too. It feels good to work in the most beautiful law faculty in Canada, and you can quote me on that!