Peter A Allard School of Law

Graduate Students

The Centre for Feminist Legal Studies (CFLS) has worked to strengthen co-operation in research, teaching, and graduate student supervision between scholars working with the Faculty of Law and elsewhere at UBC. The CFLS is proud to share the work of our L.L.M. and Ph.D. students and support their contributions to feminist legal scholarship. Please see below for profiles of graduate students affiliated with the CFLS.

our graduate students

Elspeth Kaiser-Derrick is a PhD Candidate in Law at UBC, where she also completed her LLM. Previously, she articled at a criminal defence firm in Vancouver. Her current doctoral research examines various records produced by and inside courts and prisons, pertaining to two women’s experiences of incarceration within these systems, and focusing upon institutional responses to such impacts. She published a book analyzing the sentencing of Indigenous women, in terms of how judicial understandings of intersections among victimization, criminalization, and ongoing processes of colonization influence their reasoning. 

Her favourite thing is art, and she created the linocut print appearing on the cover. To hear more about her book, and its launch through the CFLS, please refer to this blog post

For more about Elspeth’s current work, please visit: https://allard.ubc.ca/about-us/news-and-announcements/2017/elspeth-kaiser-derrick-phd-candidate


Grace is the Founder and Student Director of the UBC Climate Hub. She is a PhD Candidate in Law at UBC studying how to use law to protect climate change science from manufactured doubt. She is a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation scholar and a Killam doctoral scholar, and a past Canada-U.S. Fulbright recipient. She holds a B.A. from Rice University, a J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School, and an LL.M from the University of British Columbia. Grace has written and published three novels in a hopeful climate fantasy series, the Ava of the Gaia trilogy.

She also created and hosts Planet Potluck, a podcast exploring stories of hope, joy, and community in the climate movement. She’s never met a dance party she didn’t want to join.


Ijeamaka Anika is a Ph.D. student at Peter A. Allard School of Law, where she completed her LLM as a recipient of the Allard Scholar Graduate Fellowship. Ijeamaka comes to UBC from Nigeria, where she held a teaching position at the University of Nigeria Nsukka. Her research focuses on international and transnational criminal law.

Ijeamaka obtained her LLB (Hons) from Oxford Brookes University and an LLM in Public International Law from University College London. 

Her previous research and advocacy work focus on economic, social, and cultural rights, the medial and social impact of child marriages in Nigeria; human trafficking; and international humanitarian law in a domestic context.

In her Ph.D. studies, Ijeamaka will examine the influence of international criminal law jurisprudence on sexual and gender-based violence in domestic jurisdictions. Her research builds on public international law ideas, infused with feminist legal theory, governance, social rights, and cultural anthropology. Ijeamaka is a recipient of the UBC Four Year Fellowship (FYF). 


Maira Hassan is pursuing a PhD in Law at Peter A. Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia, where she also completed her LLM as a recipient of the Allard Scholar Graduate Fellowship. She obtained her LLB (Hons) from Queen Mary University of London and completed her undergraduate degree in Media, Information and Technoculture (MIT) and French literature from the University of Western Ontario. Her previous research work and publications include topics such as women in international policing, women in Canadian peacekeeping, and legal perspectives on extraterritorial policing.

Currently, her research focus is on aspects of consent in sexual assault law and how it might impact marginalized and racialized women in Canada. She is a recipient of the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarships-Doctoral. For more on her research, please visit: https://www.grad.ubc.ca/campus-community/meet-our-students/hassan-maira 


Moira Aikenhead is a PhD Candidate at the Peter A. Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia, where she also completed her LLM. She obtained her JD from the University of Victoria, and subsequently practiced Labour and Employment law at a large regional firm in Downtown Vancouver. Her research is centred on the intersection of digital technologies and gender violence in Canadian criminal law. She has published on topics including the non-consensual distribution of intimate images, voyeurism, and privacy expectations in relation to sexual violence.  

Her doctoral research explores the Canadian criminal justice system’s response to technology-facilitated intimate partner violence. She is a current recipient of the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship - Doctoral. For more on her research, please visit: https://www.grad.ubc.ca/campus-community/meet-our-students/aikenhead-moira 


Oludolapo Makinde is a doctoral student at the Peter A. Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia (UBC), conducting research at the intersection of corporate governance, artificial intelligence and anti-corruption law. She also obtained her LLM degree from UBC and her LLB (Hons) from the University of Lagos, Nigeria. Prior to pursuing graduate studies, she functioned as a Legal Associate at a leading law firm in Nigeria, providing corporate governance advisory services to the firm’s clients.

Oludolapo’s doctoral research is supported by the Allard Scholar Graduate Fellowship and the UBC Affiliated Fellowship Doctoral Award.

In addition to her doctoral research, Oludolapo actively engages with the Vancouver community on issues relating to anti-Black racism. In particular, as a 2019 UBC Healthy City Scholar under the auspices of the Sustainability Scholars’ Program, she investigated and identified key actions needed to address anti-Black racism in Vancouver. Her report which details her findings and recommendations drawn from literature and stakeholders, has contributed to ongoing municipal action on the subject.

To learn more about Oludolapo and her research, please visit: https://allard.ubc.ca/centre-business-law/graduate-student-profile-oludolapo-makinde


 

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