Fernando examines important aspects of the drafting of 1957 Federation of Malaya constitution related to the system of governance, division of legislative and executive powers, the conceptualization of citizenship and the roles of the judiciary and election commission.

Joseph M. Fernando was formerly an associate professor at the Department of History at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences in the University of Malaya (2000-2018) and taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses on Malaysian political and constitutional history and the history of modern Southeast Asia. He was a visiting Fulbright Scholar at the Department of History, Harvard University, in 2004/2005, and Chapman Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, in 2004, and is presently an independent researcher. He has authored several books on Malaysian constitutional and political history and published widely in international academic journals.