Faculty directory

Courses

• The Private Law Process: Torts - 108C
• Law, Legislation and Policy - 104
• Debtor and Creditor Relations - 312
• Pension Law and Policy - 382
• Social Welfare Law - 333

Publications

Freya Kodar's publications

Research

Central Research Areas

My research interests fall into three areas: pension provision and regulation, consumer debt regulation, and tort law.  Initially my research and writing in the pension area focused on pension fund investment practices, and the role of pension investment practices in both corporate regulation and financial markets.  More recently it has centred on the question of how to provide retirement security equitably and efficiently in Canada’s current political and economic climate.  I am interested specifically in thinking about how to provide retirement security for those engaged in precarious employment and / or providing unpaid care work over their life cycle.  My interest in consumer debt centres on regulatory responses to rising levels of consumer debt, with a particular focus on vulnerable consumers and the alternative consumer credit market.  In this context I have looked at financial literacy measures and payday loan regulation. And finally, my research and writing in the tort law field has focused on responses to physical, cultural and sexual abuse, particularly historical institutional abuse.

 Analytical Frameworks

I take a feminist political economy analytical approach in my work.  This approach pays attention to the relationship between social reproduction – the daily and generational reproduction of the population - and production.  It also pays attention to the role of the state, the corporate sector and markets in constructing this relationship and in constructing gender and family relations in particular social formations.  I also situate my work within scholarship on neoliberalism and the regulatory shifts that have characterized this era: a focus on decentralized governance, limited market regulation, and individual responsibility for economic and social security over the life course.  And finally, some of my writing on torts and debt regulation, as well as on teaching law, also draws on law and film scholarship, and has looked at the role of film and television in providing cultural reinforcement for the neoliberal regulatory project.