CFLS Lecture Series: Feminisms & Law 101

Professor Parkes' scholarly work examines the challenges and possibilities of addressing societal injustices through rights claims, with a focus on the criminal justice, corrections, and workplace contexts. The lens she brings to this work is feminist, intersectional, and socio-legal. Professors Parkes takes a particular interest in the incarceration of women, the limits of prison reform, and the framing and adjudicating of prisoners’ rights claims.

Professor Liston’s research focuses on public law broadly and administrative law in particular, along with the intersection of constitutional law, legal theory, and democratic theory. Her work grapples with the normative and institutional challenges that political power poses for the rule of law and democratic governance. She seeks to understand the complexity that good government demands as well as the current weaknesses in our system of responsible government. Professor Liston has also developed sub-areas of expertise in the emerging field of Aboriginal administrative law as well as modes of interpreting legal texts.

Dr. Iyioha holds the inaugural UBC Professorship in Race and Access to Justice. Her scholarship focuses on the limits and effectiveness of law in various areas of law. Drawing on moral and legal philosophy to explore the role and capacities of law in the fields of health law and policy, international human rights law, torts, public health law, and women’s health law and policy, her award-winning research has advanced understanding of why law works and why it fails in various legal, social and geopolitical contexts. She is interested in research at the intersections of race, health, and human rights law, as well as projects that build on a rich philosophical analysis.

Professor Hilland’s research examines the intersections of Indigenous laws, Aboriginal rights, and environmental regulation to challenge discriminatory theories of colonial supremacy and Indigenous inferiority that are perpetuated through the contemporary colonial legal system. Key objectives of her research are to support the resurgence of Indigenous laws and to demonstrate the potential of  Indigenous laws to enhance Canada's multi-juridical legal system.

Professor Benedet’s research focuses on legal responses to men’s sexual violence against women. Her current research considers barriers to successful criminal justice system responses to the sexual assault of women and girls, including the impact of the Charter of Rights on the evolution of sexual assault law. She also researches the use of criminal law to target sex buying and pimping.

Professor Young’s research interests focus on equality law and theory, women’s economic equality, urban theory, and local housing politics and rights.  She is also working on the intersections between environmental justice, social justice, feminism, and human rights.

Professor Liao’s research focuses on corporate law and sustainability, climate governance, and social justice. She is the UBC Sauder Distinguished Fellow of the Dhillon Centre for Business Ethics, Co-Director of the Centre for Climate Justice, and is the Chair and Principal Co-Investigator of the Canada Climate Law Initiative, dedicated to advancing director knowledge on the latest in climate risk and fiduciary obligations. 

Professor Aikenhead’s current research focuses on the adequacy of federal and provincial responses to technology-facilitated gender violence from a feminist perspective. Professor Aikenhead’s recent work examines legal responses to technology-facilitated violence within the context of abusive intimate partnerships. This includes the first analysis of British Columbia’s novel framework for addressing the non-consensual distribution of intimate images, the Intimate Image Protection Act.