The sudden passing of Professor Shakila Yacob is a loss to the international community of business historians and public policy specialists. Over a career spanning four decades, she helped place Malaysia firmly on the global map of business history scholarship while building intellectual bridges between historians, management scholars, economists, political scientists, and practitioners of public policy. Her work combined archival depth with a strong sensitivity to the political and moral dimensions of enterprise in post-colonial societies. She was a global scholar—curious, generous, and committed to ensuring that voices from Southeast Asia were heard in international scholarly debates. Shakila’s academic formation was itself transnational, reflecting the breadth that would later define her scholarship. She began her studies at the University of Malaya, where she completed a Bachelor of Arts in Southeast Asian Studies in 1985. At a time when Malaysian historiography was still largely dominated by political and social history, she was drawn to the intersections between history, politics, and business, an interest that would shape her later engagement with international business history.

Her intellectual horizons expanded further when she pursued a master’s degree in political science at Western Michigan University, where she graduated with distinction and was awarded the Lawrence Ziring Award for academic excellence. Exposure to American political science, comparative politics, and international relations sharpened her analytical tools and fostered a lasting interest in United States–Asia relations, which later informed her work on trade, foreign direct investment, and lobbying. Shakila’s doctoral studies at the University of Reading, under the supervision of Geoffrey Jones, marked a decisive turning point in her scholarly trajectory. She was the last doctoral student he supervised. Jones’s work on multinational enterprises, entrepreneurship, and corporate responsibility offered her a new model of scholarship that combined historical depth with relevance to contemporary debates. She was also exposed to a tradition of business history that combined it with economic theory, particularly international business theory, and treated firms as political and social actors, not merely economic agents. These profoundly shaped her thinking about the moral economy of international business. Completing her Ph.D. in Management and Business History in 2005, she wrote a dissertation focused on US trade and foreign direct investment in Malaya from the late nineteenth century to independence in 1957. This research laid the foundations for later contributions, systematically integrating business history into the study of Malaysian political economy and decolonization.

Through Geoffrey Jones, Shakila entered the global business history community, where she met scholars whose work she admired deeply, most notably Mira Wilkins. For her, Wilkins, together with Jones, represented the gold standard of global business history: empirically grounded, theoretically informed, and ethically engaged. Wilkins and Hill’s book, American Business Abroad: Ford in Six Continents, in particular, offered Shakila both a methodological model and a scholarly ethos grounded on rigorous archival research combined with a deep concern for understanding firms in their wider political and cultural contexts. Shakila’s ability to build lasting scholarly friendships across generations and continents became one of the defining features of her career.

Her rich intellectual formation shaped her academic life primarily at the University of Malaya, and later at Sunway University’s Jeffrey Cheah Institute on Southeast Asia Studies. A devout Muslim, Shakila drew personal strength from her faith, which also quietly informed her scholarly outlook, deepening her sensitivity to questions of justice, responsibility, and moral economy, all concerns that ran consistently through her work.

Shakila Yacob’s scholarly legacy rests above all on her writings, which collectively reshaped the study of business and international relations in Malaysia and Southeast Asia. She consistently explored how firms, states, and transnational actors negotiated power during the long transition from empire to independence. For her, business history was not a narrow subfield but a lens through which to understand post-colonial state formation. This perspective is clearly illustrated in her co-authored article with Nicholas White on “The ‘Unfinished Business’ of Malaysia’s Decolonisation: The Origins of the Guthrie Dawn Raid,” which shows how corporate power, nationalist politics, and global finance converged in one of the most iconic episodes of Malaysian economic nationalism.Footnote ¹ Her engagement with Business History Review began in 2005 when she published a review essay on Nicholas White’s book British Business in Post-Colonial Malaysia, 1957–70. More than a conventional book review, the piece signaled her commitment to bringing Malaysian perspectives into global debates about neo-colonialism and the post-imperial strategies of British firms. It also announced her arrival as a scholar able to engage confidently with the leading figures in international business history. Her 2009 article “Ford’s Investment in Colonial Malaya, 1926–1957,” published in Business History Review, combines meticulous archival research with conceptual clarity and a strong commitment to situating corporate strategies within their political and cultural environments.Footnote ² The article reconstructed Ford Canada’s entry into Malaya and its subsequent evolution within the British imperial economy. Shakila showed how Ford’s experience in Malaya challenged simplistic narratives of American corporate dominance. Instead, she revealed a more complex story of negotiation, adaptation, and sometimes vulnerability, as the company navigated British colonial policies, Chinese entrepreneurial networks, and shifting consumer markets. This article was also notable for its explicit engagement with the work of Mira Wilkins, who had read earlier drafts of the paper, offering comments that Shakila later described as both generous and transformative.

In the following decade Shakila broadened her analytical lens to examine the politics of lobbying and the informational strategies of firms and governments. In her research on palm oil in United States–Malaysia relations, she explored how a commodity, now largely framed in environmental terms, had long been embedded in complex geopolitical struggles. By analyzing lobbying campaigns in Washington, DC; counter-campaigns by Malaysian producers; and the role of state agencies on both sides, she illuminated the contested terrain where trade policy, public opinion, and corporate power intersected. This research exemplified, once again, her capacity to combine business history with international political economy, offering insights relevant not only to historians but also to policymakers.

In 2025, in her chapter contribution “Forests for Sale: Multinationals and Civil Society’s Oversight in the Palm Oil Agribusiness—Wilmar International” to the volume Climate Change and Business: Historical Perspectives, edited by Teresa da Silva Lopes, Paul Duguid, and Robert Fredona, Shakila Yacob explored how long-term histories of commodity production and trade illuminate contemporary debates about sustainability.Footnote ³ In this work, as in so much else she wrote, Shakila insisted that environmental debates could not be separated from histories of empire, development, and corporate power. Alongside her articles and book chapter contributions, Shakila authored and edited a number of influential books. Her monograph The United States and the Malaysian Economy (2008), based on her doctoral dissertation, offered a non-Eurocentric account of how American economic power, through investment, policy influence, and multinational firms, profoundly shaped Malaysia’s post-colonial development, revealing the intimate links between Cold War geopolitics and economic modernization in Southeast Asia.Footnote ⁴ This, as well as several of her other publications, share a common concern with agency and how local actors, such as politicians, entrepreneurs, bureaucrats, engaged with powerful foreign firms and governments, and how these encounters shaped the trajectories of post-colonial development. In addition to her English-language scholarship, Shakila produced highly influential work in other languages, especially in Malay, where her publications reached wide academic and public audiences and became standard references in Malaysian higher education. Among the most notable are her monograph Amerika Syarikat: Pembentukan Negara Bangsa (2005), her widely cited articles on United States–Malaysia relations and political culture, and her co-authored volume Sejarah dan Media Baharu (2015), which examines how digital tools are transforming the teaching of history.Footnote ⁵ Together these works have shaped teaching, research agendas, and public debate well beyond the academy.

In her later years Shakila increasingly turned to collaborative projects. She was deeply involved in the (Post-)Colonial Business History Network, contributing not only intellectually but institutionally, helping create spaces where scholars from the Global South could engage on equal terms with colleagues in Europe and North America. Security Strategies in International Business History—German Companies in Asia in the 20th Century, her 2025 volume co-edited with Marie Huber and Christian Kleinschmidt, brought together research on post-colonial business landscapes, German–Asian trade relations, and the politics of enterprise.Footnote ⁶ The project grew out of her time as a visiting fellow at Philipps-Universität Marburg, where she worked closely with European colleagues to broaden the geographical and conceptual scope of the field. Shakila Yacob was an exceptional teacher. At the University of Malaya, she taught generations of students in business history, Southeast Asian history, and public policy. Her classrooms were spaces of intellectual openness, where historians learned to think about firms, management students encountered the politics of decolonization, and policy students discovered the value of historical perspectives.

She supervised numerous master’s and doctoral theses, many of them by students who went on to careers in academia, government, and international organizations. For Shakila, supervision was not merely an academic responsibility but a form of intellectual partnership. She encouraged her students to think big, to work across disciplines, and, above all, to believe that research rooted in Malaysia could speak to global debates. In her later career, she institutionalized this ethos through her work with policy labs, mentoring young scholars and practitioners in evidence-based policymaking.

Shakila Yacob’s influence cannot be measured by publication alone. She was a bridge-builder between disciplines, between regions, and between academia and the policy world. She helped extend international business history beyond its traditional Western focus and brought Malaysian experiences into the center of the field. Few scholars did more to connect Malaysian research to international networks such as the Business History Conference; the World Congress of Business History, where she served as Southeast Asia’s committee representative at the time of her passing; the European Business History Association; and the (Post-)Colonial Business History Network. She was also a tireless advocate for Southeast Asian scholarship, urging younger colleagues to publish internationally and to claim their place in global conversations. One of her last posts on social media “Let’s put Malaysia on the business history map” was not a slogan but a mission she pursued throughout her career with remarkable energy and generosity. Through her writings, her teaching, and her institutional leadership, she helped redefine what it meant to do business history in and from the Global South. Shakila Yacob will be remembered not only as a distinguished scholar committed to advancing knowledge and helping improve society but as a deeply generous, genuine, and kind person and friend. She is survived by her husband, Kamarudin, and her five children, Ameer, Qistina, Fatin Quraisya, Qamaryna, and Qasryna, and a grandson, Eldin, to whom we extend our deepest sympathy.