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FF Issue no. 3 | 2022
FELICITATIONSELICITATIONSELICITATIONS
HAPPY RETIREMENT TO

PROFESSOR DR. SHAKILA PARWEEN

YACOB

1994 - 2022
Department of History, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences,
Universiti Malaya

After 28 years of dedicated service to the Universiti Malaya, Professor Dr Shakila Parween Yacob, Professor of
business history and international business, Department of History, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, retired on
September 12, 2022.

Dr. Shakila has served the University in various capacities. She was formerly the executive director of the
International Institute of Public Policy and Management (INPUMA), University of Malaya. During her tenure as
executive director (2018–2021), Dr. Shakila introduced several policy initiatives, including the bi-annual
publication of the Policy Casebook Series; Policy Talks, a platform promoting collaborative policymaking; and
PolicyPALS, a program to create interest in public policy among university students and secondary school leavers.
Prior to this appointment, she served as the director of the Centre for Civilisational Dialogue, University of Malaya
(UMCCD) (2016–2018). She was awarded the FY2015/2016 Fulbright Malaysian Scholar Program scholarship and
was based at the University of Maryland in the United States (US) from October 2015 until July 2016. She has also
held visiting scholar positions at universities in the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US).

As a business historian and political scientist, Dr. Shakila’s research has contributed to the fields of business
history, international business, comparative politics, critical thinking, and public policy. In her ground breaking
book, The United States and the Malaysian Economy (2008) published with Routledge Studies in the Growth
Economies of Asia, she examined US foreign direct investment (FDI) in colonial Malaya and post-colonial Malaysia.
One of her most cited works is a seminal study on “The ‘Unfinished Business’ of Malaysia's Decolonisation: The
Origins of the Guthrie Dawn Raid' (Modern Asian Studies, 44.5, 2010), with co-author Nicholas J. White.

We are at once happy and sad as we wish her a happy and fruitful retirement.

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