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William Roff (mainly known as Bill) was born in Bearsden, in East Dunbartonshire, Scotland. He joined the merchant navy in the late 1940s and worked for the British and Burmese Steam Navigation Company in Asia.. He settled in New Zealand, working as a journalist, and in 1952, he took up New Zealand's offer for anyone over 21 to enrol in tertiary education and studied part-time for a history degree and Masters at Victoria University, Wellington. He went to the Australian National University for his PhD, much of which was researched when living with a family in Kampung Jawa, near Kuala Lumpur. His thesis was subsequently published as The Origins of Malay Nationalism .
He taught at the University of Malaya from 1965-1969 before moving to the University of Colombia where he remained until his retirement. On retiring, he moved with his wife, Sue, to the East Neuk of Fife, Scotland, in the early 1990s, and was an honorary professorial fellow in Edinburgh University's Islamic and Middle Eastern department. Throughout his "retirement" he continued to supervise PhD candidates. He died in 2013, aged 84.