Umidjon Toshimov has been teaching at various Law Schools in Uzbekistan for five years. He holds an undergraduate degree from Tashkent State University of Law and a postgraduate degree from Lancaster University Law School, UK.

His research interests include punishment and society, social control, police, and criminal justice institutions. He is currently at the advanced stage of his PhD candidacy (all but dissertation, ABD), with his doctoral research focusing on understanding how Russian colonialism shaped penality and the penal state in Central Asia, contributing to the development of a plural system of punishment.

He held visiting research positions at the School of Social Work & Social Policy, University of Strathclyde, UK, and at the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2021, he presented his research at a workshop titled Punishment in Global Peripheries: Contemporary Changes and Historical Continuities, co- organised by the Oxford Centre for Criminology and Universidad de Litoral, Argentina. In 2023, he was invited to participate in the workshop titled Situating the ‘Global East’ in Southernising and Decolonising Movements in Socio-Legal Studies. He also peer-reviewed a journal article for the Howard Journal of Crime and Justice. He is a member of the British Society of Criminology and the Law and Society Association. He was recently called to the Uzbek Bar.