Our Students

Some of Our Current LL.M.s

Jan Clark

Jan Clark received an LL.B. and MSc. from the University of Calgary and practiced in the fields of regulatory, environmental and energy law (including electrical, pipeline and oil and gas law). She worked as senior counsel and regulatory manager for several multi-national corporations and then as General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of a mid-size multinational pipeline company. She retired from the energy industry and has returned to university to pursue an LL.M. in the field of legal history. Her thesis traces the roots of the English Common Law from the 4th century Germanic tribes of Europe to the courts of the Angevin kings during the High Middles in England, and looks at the many influences that aided in the formation of the common law.

Michael Litchfield

B.A. (UBC) 2000, LL.B. (UBC) 2004, called to the Bar of British Columbia in 2005. Michael Litchfield served as a law clerk to the Supreme Court of British Columbia. He then practised at a national firm in Vancouver and a regional firm in Kelowna for a short time before setting out on his own to establish Redwood Law Corporation. In addition to his solicitor’s practice, Michael also works as a management consultant and has managed a variety of innovative projects in British Columbia, including the Canadian Bar Association’s Rural Education and Access to Lawyers Initiative and the Public Commission on Legal Aid. Michael is also extensively involved in the non-profit sector and is a former board member of the Red Door Housing Society and the Habitat for Humanity Society of Greater Vancouver. Michael is regularly called upon to speak about legal, management and housing issues. He is a regular columnist on justice issues for the legal blog SLAW and has contributed articles to The Lawyers Weekly, BarTalk and Canadian Lawyer magazine. Michael's thesis focusses on the structuring of social enterprise in Canada.

Adam Nott
Adam is a lawyer called to the Bar in British Columbia (2005). He holds a Double Major in Geography – Environmental Specialty and Economics from Simon Fraser University (B.A. 2001) and graduated cum laude from the University of Ottawa (J.D. 2004). Prior to entering law, his career included a variety of resource and environmental management positions ranging from land use planning, watershed mapping to the development of community agricultural programs and experimental work regarding the impact of sediments on juvenile salmonoids. His legal career started with a judicial clerkship at the Tax Court of Canada and continued at a national law firm where he established and managed the national Renewable Energy practice group. After departing that firm, he established his own legal practice where he continued to service a wide range of clients before taking his current position as General Counsel for a North American earth and water resource consulting service. Adam’s thesis focuses on the corporate and regulatory regimes governing mining projects and the legitimacy and ability of those regimes to manage environmental scarcity and issues of environmental justice.

Daleen Adele Thomas
Daleen is a Métis mother of three children. In 1999, she completed a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Lethbridge. Before beginning her LL.B., she completed the Peace Officer training at the Justice Institute and she worked as a Peace Officer. In 2008 she graduated from the University of Victoria with an LL.B. In 2007-2008 she was the secretary of the Indigenous Law Students Association. She began her LL.M. in 2010. Currently, Daleen is a member of the Vancouver Island Health Authority Pediatrics Ethics Committee and the Greater Victoria Family Court and Youth Justice Committee. Her main area of interest is children and the law and she is currently examining Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and a child's right to legal representation under the supervision of Professors Maneesha Deckha and Catherine Richardson (SOCI).

Michelle Zakrison
Michelle Zakrison in an LL.M. candidate, whose research focuses on how the promotion and advancement of Aboriginal rights can be utilized to concurrently create solutions for the protection of the environment.  Michelle completed her Bachelor of Environmental Studies with a double-major in Political Science at the University of Waterloo.  She then went to the University of Ottawa for her J.D. (Juris Doctor) degree where she specialized in Environmental and Aboriginal Law.  She aspires to work at a small boutique environmental and Aboriginal law firm.

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Some of Our Current Ph.D.s

Andrée Boisselle

Andrée Boisselle (PhD Candidate and Trudeau scholar) studied and practiced law in Quebec, where she received B.C.L. and LL.B. degrees from McGill in 1999. Her LL.M. thesis at the Université de Montréal, which was published by the Éditions Universitaires Européennes, critically examines the development of the duty to consult First Nations in Canadian constitutional law. Her doctoral research focuses on the constitutional dimension of the Coast Salish legal tradition. Her research interests include comparative law, constitutional law, and legal pluralism and federalism.

Angela Cameron

Angela received her LL.B. from Dalhousie University in 1998, and was admitted to the Nova Scotia Bar in 1999. She received her L.L.M. from the University of British Columbia in 2003. She is currently a Doctoral Candidate at the University of Victoria where she has been an SSHRC Doctoral Fellow, and a President’s Research Scholar. Angela joined the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law in 2008 where she teaches Property Law, Constitutional Law II, and Restorative Justice. Angela's research focusses on whether restorative justice is an appropriate response to crimes of intimate violence.

Anne-Marie Delagrave
Anne-Marie Delagrave completed her LL.B. (with honours) and LL.M. at Laval University and was called to the Quebec Bar in 2007. Her LL.M. thesis (Le contrôle de l’apparence physique du salarié à la lumière de la Charte des droits et libertés de la personne) was written under the supervision of Professor Christian Brunelle and was published in 2010 at Les Éditions Yvon Blais. In 2011, she was a Sessional Lecturer in the Faculty of Law at Laval University where she taught Human Rights. As a recipient of the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canadian Graduate Scholarship (SSHRC), Anne-Marie is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in law under the supervision of Professor Judy Fudge. Her thesis examines the regulation of physical appearance in the workplace in Canada, and her research interests mainly include human rights, employment and labour law, sociology and the law, and feminist approaches to law.

Gene Fraser

Gene Fraser received his bachelor of arts degree with honours in psychology and philosophy from Simon Fraser University. He also attended the University of Toronto Law School where he graduated with a J.D. degree. Afterwards, he practiced law in Toronto and Vancouver for several years before entering the Law and Society Graduate Program at the University of Victoria Law School in 2006. Gene is currently a Ph.D. candidate and his interdisciplinary doctoral research is being supervised by Dr. James Tully, Dr. Kathy Teghtsoonian and Professor Maneesha Deckha. He is a recipient of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Counsel of Canada (SSHRC) Doctoral Fellowship and the President’s Research Scholarship from the University of Victoria. His doctoral research draws on philosophy and critical social theory to examine the role that conceptions of moral agency play in determinations of capacity to consent to psychiatric treatment in Canadian mental health law.

Jared Giesbrecht

Jared Giesbrecht graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Theology from Prairie Bible College, a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy (honours) from Lethbridge University, and a J.D. in Law from Queen’s University. He is now a J.-Armand Bombardier SSHRC scholar at the University of Victoria where he is writing his doctoral thesis under the supervision of Professors Jeremy Webber and James Tully. His research involves the reimagining of the central normative ideals underlying liberal democratic society (i.e., persons as free, equal, and rational). His goal is to develop an approach to legal and democratic theory that de-problematizes difference and thereby avoids the violence of homogenization.

Benjamin Isitt
Ben holds an LLB from the University of London and a PhD in History from the University of New Brunswick. He is the author of two books that highlight the interaction between social movements and states in twentieth-century Canada and the world: From Victoria to Vladivostok: Canada's Siberian Expedition, 1917-19(Vancouver: UBC Press, 2010) and Militant Minority: British Columbia Workers and the Rise of a New Left, 1948-1972 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011). Before entering the PhD Law and Society program, Ben taught history at UBC, UVic, and the University of New Brunswick. His Law dissertation, which is being supervised by Professor Judy Fudge, explores the legal politics of Canadian labour relations and the ways in which the class background, social and economic affiliations, and political loyalties of judges shape judicial reasoning.

Carwyn Jones

Carwyn Jones is a Maori lawyer from Aotearoa/New Zealand and is of Ngati Kahungunu and Te Aitanga-a-Mahaki descent. Carwyn received his LL.B. from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand and an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies (combining law, history, and indigenous peoples studies) from York University, Toronto. He has a strong interest in Indigenous law and the legal issues related to Indigenous peoples and has previously worked in a number of different roles at the Maori Land Court and the Waitangi Tribunal. Since 2006, Carwyn has been a lecturer in the Faculty of Law at Victoria University of Wellington where he specializes in the Treaty of Waitangi and Maori customary law. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Faculty of Law at the University of Victoria working under the supervision of Professors John McLaren and Hamar Foster. His current research explores the development of Maori legal traditions in the context of the settlement of historical claims to land and natural resources in Aotearoa.

Chong Ke

Chong Ke received her B.A. degree in law from China University of Political Science and Law in 2004. In the following year, she worked as a paralegal at Beijing Huawei Law Firm. She then obtained her M.A. degree in constitutional and administrative law from Beijing University in 2007. During her masters, she served as a teaching assistant in constitutional law. She also worked part-time as a research assistant at the Supreme Court of PRC in 2006. Chong Ke is currently pursuing her PhD degree in law and society at UVic under the supervision of Professor Jeremy Webber. Her research interests include rule of law, constitutionalism, comparative constitutional law, minority rights and equity. Her dissertation explores the dynamics of village elections in China, examines the role of government and society in shaping the electoral process, with a focus on Sichuan, where she conducted extensive field studies in the summer of 2009.

Nuthamon (Natta) Kongcharoen
Nuthamon Kongcharoen received her Bachelor Degree (LL.B.) in 1990, and Master Degree (LL.M. in Public Law) in 1994 from Chulalongkorn University. She returned to teach in her hometown at Chiang Mai University in 1994 as a lecturer in law. In academic year of 2001, she was a visiting scholar at Harvard-Yenching Institute at Harvard University. She also graduated from the International Human Rights Law Program (LL.M.) at Indiana University, Indianapolis in 2007. Her research interests include Southeast Asia legal system, public law, and green legal theory.

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Johnny Mack

Johnny Mack was one of 14 doctoral students across Canada awarded a prestigious Pierre Elliot Trudeau Scholarship in 2011. Johnny’s research interests include Indigenous legal traditions, Indigenous constitutionalism, democratic constitutionalism, postcolonial theory, critical legal studies, and legal pluralism. His dissertation is tentatively titled “From liberation to liberalism: Nuu-chah-nulth Constitutional Politics in Historical Perspective”. It will assess the manner in which the Aboriginal rights and title framework in Canada carry forward the momentum of colonial policy by continuing to dispossess indigenous peoples of their land base and the domesticating their sociopolitical and legal orders. His LLM thesis, entitled Thickening Totems and Thinning Imperialism, provided a critical analysis of the Maa-nulth Treaty Agreement.

Sarah Morales

Sarah Morales is Coast Salish and a member of Cowichan Tribes. As the Department of Justice Congressional Fellow at the University of Arizona, Sarah clerked for the Pasqua Yaqui Tribal Appellate Court and worked on a petition to the Organization of American States. Her research interests include water law, international human rights law and Indigenous legal traditions. She has worked for numerous First Nation organizations in British Columbia throughout her studies, including the Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group, the National Centre for First Nations Governance and Cowichan Tribes. Sarah is currently pursuing her Ph.D. degree at the University of Victoria Faculty of Law. She taught Law343 (International Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples) in 2009.

Nicole O’Byrne

Nicole O’Byrne, B.Sc. (Queen’s) 1996, LL.B. (Saskatchewan) 2001, B.A. (Hons.) (Regina) 2003, LL.M. (McGill) 2006. Nicole is a Ph.D. candidate in Law and Society at the Faculty of Law, University of Victoria. Her LL.M. thesis, “The ‘Answer to the Natural Resources Question: A Historical Analysis of the Natural Resources Transfer Agreements,” won the Pilarczyk Graduate Prize for legal history. In her dissertation, she is focusing on the interpretation of the Natural Resources Transfer Agreements (also known as The British North America Act, 1930) and its impact on the rights of Aboriginal peoples in the prairie provinces. Her co-supervisors are Jeremy Webber and Hamar Foster. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of New Brunswick where she teaches Evidence law, Aboriginal law, and Criminal law.

Kathryn (Kate) Plyley
Kate Plyley is a doctoral candidate in the ‘Law & Society’ program at the University of Victoria. Her research is on the topic of ‘tolerated illegality’. More specifically, she is interested in the cause of the emergence of tolerated illegality, the effect that its existence has on a legal system, and how to resolve these socio-legal conflicts once they exist. Kate received an honours B.A. from the University of Toronto in 2008 (Ethics, Society & Law), and a M.A. from Carleton University in 2011 (Legal Studies).

Jing Qian

Jing obtained his LL.B. from Faculty of Law, Zhejiang Gongshang University in 2007 (with top 1% Distinction), during which he conducted empirical researches on local democracy and interest representation of migrant workers in Zhejiang Province, China. Under supervision of Dr. Andrew Harding and Dr. Wu Guoguang, he further received an LL.M. in the interdisciplinary graduate program of Law and Society in Faculty of Law, University of Victoria in 2010, with a thesis titled Corporatist Legislature: Authoritarianism, Representation and Local People's Congress in Zhejiang. Currently, he is a doctoral student in UVic Law, with a specific focus on Chinese administrative law in general, exploring judicial role in authoritarian regimes and how the development of rule of law in transitional countries shapes both state-society and central-local relationships. His main interests are the rule of law, law and governance (mainly on local governance), central-local relations and state-society relations (especially the issue of representation). Moreover, since Jing’s LL.B. years, he has been active in student politics and public affairs.

Supriya Routh

Supriya Routh entered the doctoral program in 2009, and he is pursuing his research in labour law under the supervision of Professor Judy Fudge. His thesis explores the possibility of and mechanisms for institutionalizing the Decent Work Agenda for informal employment in India. A University of Victoria fellow and a CRIMT scholar, Supriya is an Assistant Professor at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, India since 2007. He has completed his LL.M. from the Vanderbilt University School of Law in 2008. He was a Fulbright fellow and a Vanderbilt University fellow during his LL.M. studies at the Vanderbilt University. He completed his B.A. and LL.B. at the Department of Law, North Bengal University, India in 2003 and his first LL.M. from the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, India 2005.

Jacinta Ruru

Jacinta Ruru is a senior lecturer, having joined the University of Otago faculty in 1999. Her research interests include Indigenous peoples’ rights to own, manage and govern land and water. Jacinta is coordinator the University of Otago Research Cluster for Natural Resources Law, co-leader of the Centre for Research on National Identity ‘Landscape’ project and co-leader of a four-year water governance research project based at Landcare Research, funded by the Foundation for Research Science and Technology (FRST). Jacinta's research focusses on Indigenous Peoples rights to manage and own national parks, law and geography theoretical base. Her work is a comparative interdisciplinary study exploring what ought to be the ramifications for legal systems committed to reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples in the context of owning and managing national parks.

Jennifer Smith
Jennifer received a BSc. (Psychology) from the University of Calgary. She attended law school at the University of Victoria, where she received the Davis Prize in Environmental Law. Jennifer also completed her LL.M. at the University of Victoria's Faculty of Law. Her LL.M. thesis entitled “Sustainable Governance in Voluntary Forest Carbon Standards” was supervised by Professors Chris Tollefson (UVic) and Meinhard Doelle (Dalhousie). Jennifer is now working on a PhD in the area of environmental displacement of human populations and the concept of climate change refugees.

Areli Valencia

Areli Valencia has a Bachelor of Law Degree (LL.B.) from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru and was called to the Bar of Lima, Peru in 2001. Her professional experience in the areas of human rights and constitutional law include working with the National Congress of Peru, the Ministry of Women and Social Development of Peru and the Constitutional Tribunal of Peru. Areli is currently a PhD candidate in the Law Faculty at the University of Victoria (Canada), working under the supervision of Professors Hester Lessard (Faculty of Law), Cecilia Benoit (Department of Sociology), and Laura Parisi (Department of Women’s Studies). She holds a Canadian Graduate Scholarship from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Her doctoral thesis entitle “A Capability-Oriented View of Human Rights: A Case Study of the Mining Community of La Oroya-Peru” bridges the discourses of human rights and the capability approach of Amartya Sen in order to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the root causes, processes and consequences of human rights violations within this community. In the Spring of 2011, Areli conducted research at the Centre for Development Studies - Department of Social and Policy Science, University of Bath (UK), under the supervision of Severine Deneulin, made possible through the Michael Smith Foreign Study Supplement offered by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Neil Vallance

Neil retired from the practice of law in Victoria to begin his Ph.D. at UVic. For the last 10 years he has also been researching and drafting historical reports on Specific Claims for Indian and Northern Affairs Canada and for various First Nations. Many of the claims allege failure by the Crown to fulfill promises made in the so-called Douglas Treaties, entered into with Vancouver Island First Nations between 1850 and 1854. Neil intends to draw upon this body of accumulated knowledge in his dissertation, tentatively entitled "Forgotten Promises: The Douglas Treaties In Historical Context". The "context" will include British Colonial policy in the 19th century, the treaties entered into by the United States with native Americans in the Oregon Territory in the 1840s, and the Waitangi Treaty (and subsequent land transfers) entered into by Britain with the Maori people, also in the 1840s. Neil is a recipient of a Canadian Graduate Scholarship from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

Richard Veerapen
Richard is a UK-trained neurosurgeon who retired from clinical practice after a 28-year career in medicine when he moved with his family to Victoria in 2004. He holds an LL.B (Hons) from Wolverhapton U, an LL.M (Medical Law - Northumbria U) and an MA in Dispute Resolution (UVic). During his PhD (Law and Society) program under the supervision of Prof Maneesha Deckha, he will research the legal and ethical principles that specialist physicians perceive as relevant when engaging with family members or close others of patients who have capacity to give medical consent. Richard's MA in Dispute Resolution thesis The experience of Malaysian neurosurgeons with physician-patient conflict in the aftermath of adverse medical events: A heuristic study is available online.

Ania Zbyszewska
Ania is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Victoria Faculty of Law. She is a member of CRIMT, the Inter-University Research Network on Work and Globalization, and the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence at the University of Victoria. She obtained her LL.B. from University of Windsor (2005) and an Anthropology B.A. (Hons.) from the University of Toronto (2001). Prior to returning to graduate studies, Ania practiced labour and employment law at a union-side boutique firm in Toronto and clerked at the Superior Court of Justice. In Spring of 2010, Ania completed her fieldwork in Europe and is currently writing her dissertation entitled Unveiling the Politics of Gender in the EU Working Time Regulation – The Case of Poland, under the supervison of Professors Judy Fudge (Law), Oliver Schmidtke, and Amy Verdun (Political Science, European Studies). The focus of Ania’s dissertation are the European Union’s regulatory measures in the area of working-time, primarily the Directive on Working Time. Specifically, Ania’s work addresses the extent to which EU working time regulations and the political discourse surrounding them represent a particular understanding of gender equality, and their impact on the working-time regime in post-transition Poland. Ania’s focus on the EU-Polish working time regime nexus represents part of her broader interest in tracing the historical changes in the Polish working time regime, in order to understand the relationship between political economic transition, the organization of working time and women’s and men’s respective positions in the labour market.

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