Marlee Kline Lecture - Natasha Bakht

Natasha Bakht is a Full Professor of law at the University of Ottawa. She held the Shirley Greenberg Chair of Women and the Legal Profession from 2020-2024. She was called to the bar of Ontario in 2003 and served as a law clerk to Justice Louise Arbour at the Supreme Court of Canada. Her research interests are generally in law, culture and minority rights and specifically in the intersecting area of religious freedom and women’s equality. Her research on the niqab analyzes the unwarranted popular panic concerning Muslim women who cover their faces and explores systemic barriers to inclusion perpetuated by Canada’s legal and political system. Her book In Your Face: Law Justice and Niqab-Wearing Women in Canada was listed in the Hill Times 100 Best Books of 2020 and received the 2020-2021 Huguenot Society of Canada Award. She has been cited by the Supreme Court of Canada in R v NS, 2012 SCC 72, a case involving a niqab-wearing sexual assault complainant.