Meet Régine Tremblay: Director of the Centre for Feminist Legal Studies

The Centre for Feminist Legal Studies (CFLS) is pleased to announce that Régine Tremblay, Assistant Professor at Allard Law, has been appointed Director of the Centre for Feminist Legal Studies. Professor Tremblay will assume the role starting September 1, 2021. We would like to extend our sincere thanks to the Centre’s outgoing Director, Professor Debra Parkes, for her exceptional leadership during her time as Director of the CFLS.

Professor Tremblay began teaching at Allard Law in 2017, joining the CFLS as a member of the Steering Committee the same year. Her areas of expertise include family law, matrimonial property law, private law, comparative law, family mediation, reproduction and law, and critical theories, including feminism and queer theories. She holds a BCL and an LLB from the Faculty of Law at McGill University and an LLM and an SJD from the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto. She is a member of the Quebec Bar since 2011 and a member of the Comité consultatif en droit de la famille since 2018. 

Her research has been published in English and French in both Canada and in the United Kingdom, in publications such as the Supreme Court Law Review, the Canadian Journal of Family Law, and the Canadian Journal of Women and the Law. She coauthored the Private Law Dictionary of the Family, 2nd edition, and the Dictionnaire de droit privé: Les familles, 2ème édition. She is a contributor to the McGill Companion to Law, the Jurisclasseur: Personnes et famille (QC), and is the co-editor of Les intraduisibles en droit civil. Her research has been funded by institutions including the Law Foundation of British Columbia and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. She is, alongside Professor Erez Aloni, the co-advisor of the Canadian Journal of Family Law and the co-editor of House Rules: Changing Families, Evolving Norms, and the Role of Law [UBC Press, forthcoming]. She is an Editorial Board Member of the Canadian Journal of Women and the Law. 

What’s your vision for the CFLS?

In many respects, I would like to continue the Centre’s current path – a commitment to fostering inclusive feminist engagement through research, teaching, and community building. My goal is to build upon the work of Professor Parkes and our predecessors to nurture inclusive communities, build relationships, and include a range of voices in the conversations that the CFLS generates and contributes to. Communities and relationships will be of crucial importance in the post-COVID19 era, and I will be looking to create opportunities for feminist students to learn to constructively disagree and to have respectful dialogue.

Another aim will be to continue to increase the Centre’s formal research outputs and develop new pan-Canadian research collaborations. I am especially looking forward to engaging with feminisms and legal pluralism, revitalizing students’ involvement in the Centre, and learning from feminists with a range of different experiences and voices.

What are some of the topics you would like to see the Centre engaging in the next few years?

Tough question. The CFLS is a community in which numerous stakeholders have a voice and their interests matter as much as those of the Director. Maybe the best way to answer this question is to give a sneak-peek at the topics we hope to engage with for the 2021-2022 academic year. These include respectful dialogue and ‘brave space,’ prostitution/sex work, feminist leadership, women’s reproductive health, and feminist pedagogy. We will also celebrate the 25^th anniversary of the CFLS in 2022 and will organize events such as an alumni speaker series and a conference entitled Reflecting on 25 years of Feminist Legal Studies in Canada: Fights, Lessons, and Successes (FLS). Anti-racism and equity and diversity will be a crucial focus, as will engaging intersectionally with the impacts of the pandemic. I invite the feminist legal community to reach out about topics of interest! 

How can students, scholars, and the wider feminist legal community get involved with the CLFS?

Students, scholars and the wider feminist legal community can attend our various events (speaker series, Marlee Kline lecture, and more). We will try to keep offering them in a hybrid format to reach a larger audience, and to increase accessibility. You can also follow us on social media (Facebook and Twitter) and engage with us online, or contact us at Allard Law Feminist Legal Studies UBC <cfls@allard.ubc.ca>. Students are always welcome in the Marlee Kline room and feminist library, and we plan to organize networking opportunities and community events there throughout the year (provided the situation with the pandemic allows).