Members

Lori G. Beaman is currently the Principal Investigator of the Nonreligion in a Complex Future (NCF) Project, a $2.5 million, 7-year Partnership Grant funded by SSHRC and housed at the University of Ottawa. With a team of 21 researchers, this international, comparative, interdisciplinary research project identifies the social impact of the rapid and dramatic increase of nonreligion in Canada, Australia, the Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland), the United States, the United Kingdom, and Latin America (Brazil and Argentina). The primary focus is to study the relationship between increasingly complex diversities created by growing nonreligion populations and institutions, and to build an evidence base from which to identify models for living well together in complex, diverse, and inclusive societies. The project looks specifically at social institutions where nonreligion is increasingly visible such as health, law, education, and in the environment and migration. In each of these areas, the NCF project asks how the approaches and interests of the nonreligious challenge existing and taken-for-granted practices and cultures.

Louise Bélanger-Hardy's current research interests include human rights of older persons, the rights of caregivers and patients in health care settings, liability issues and private home care, consent in the medical and research settings and professional responsibility. For over ten years, she held cross-appointments to administrative tribunals dealing with health professions and health services in Ontario.

Sarah Berger Richardson is President of the Canadian Association of Food Law and Policy and a member of the Law Society of Ontario. Her research focuses on the regulation of the agri-food sector, with a particular emphasis on farmed animals and the meat processing industry. Previously, she served as a law clerk at the Supreme Court of Israel and the Canada Agricultural Review Tribunal.

Emmanuelle Bernheim holds the Canada Research Chair in Mental Health and Access to Justice. Her research focuses on the role of law and justice in the production and reproduction of inequalities. Over the past five years, she has developed a research program around the issue of access to justice and its implementation for marginalized citizens under three main axes: mental health, youth protection and self-representation in court.

Ivy Lynn Bourgeault is University Research Chair in Gender, Diversity and the Professions. She leads the Canadian Health Workforce Network and the Empowering Women Leaders in Health initiative. Dr. Bourgeault has garnered an international reputation for her research on the health workforce, particularly from a gender lens. Past projects have examined the migration and integration of health workers from a comparative perspective and on primary and maternity care workforce issues. Recent projects focus on care relationships in home and long term care, and on psychological health and safety of professional workers.

Professor Cameron is a co-investigator on three SSHRC funded grants: "Surrogates Voices: Exploring Surrogate's Experiences and Insights", "Indigenous Land Reform, Indigenous law and Gender", and "Gender and  Impact Benefit  Agreements." Her research areas include critical feminist perspectives on assisted human reproduction, LGBTQ+ family law,  human rights law, sociological approaches to law and critical feminist perspectives on Indigenous-settler relations.

Dr. Stefanie Carsley is an Assistant Professor at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law, Common Law Section where she researches and teaches in the areas of family law, health law and tort law. Her research focuses on Canadian law and policy responses to assisted reproduction (surrogacy, in vitro fertilization, and sperm, egg and embryo donation).

Jennifer A. Chandler studies the legal and ethical aspects of biomedical science and technology, with a focus on (1) the intersection of the brain sciences, law and ethics, and (2) legal policy related to organ donation and transplantation. She holds the University of Ottawa’s Bertram Loeb Research Chair. She leads the “Neuroethics Law and Society” Research Pillar for the Brain Mind Research Institute and sits on its Scientific Advisory Council. In her research, she collaborates with a diverse international group of academics and clinicians and she led the recent publication of the first international comparative study of the laws of “psychosurgery” with the contributions of leading functional neurosurgeons from Europe, Asia and the Americas. She coordinates a new tri-national project – Hybrid Minds – bringing together researchers from Switzerland, Germany and Canada to examine the implications of embedding artificial intelligence within neuroprosthetics. For the past several years, she has run a discussion group called Mind-Brain-Law which went online during the pandemic and includes nearly 100 members from North and South America, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. She is active in Canadian neuroscience research funding policy, and currently sits as a member of the Advisory Board for the Institute for Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction. Jennifer Chandler also regularly contributes to Canadian governmental policy on contentious matters of biomedicine. She is a member of the Government’s independent panel advising on safeguards related to medical assistance in dying in the context of mental illness, and was a member of the 2018 government-commissioned National Expert Panel on Medical Assistance in Dying. She is currently co-chairing the law and ethics working group of a CBS-sponsored clinical guideline development process looking at the definition of brain death and criteria for the determination of brain death, and she also chairs the Ethics Committee of the Canadian Society for Transplantation.

A lawyer and social worker by training, Professor Chen’s research program examines laws and policies at the intersection of health and international migration, particularly the mechanics of health inequities facing noncitizens and racialized minorities. His published work has addressed such topics as health rights litigation, migrant and refugee health, social determinants of health, health care solidarity, and medical tourism. Besides his scholarly pursuits, Professor Chen engages in a variety of community-based work and pro bono legal services. He has served as a member of the board of directors for several non-profit organizations, including the HIV Legal Network, the Community Alliance for Accessible Treatment, and the Canadian Centre on Statelessness.

The pace of societal change is accelerating. Pandemics, artificial intelligence, space exploration, climate change, political upheavals, anomalous sightings, and even the new ways in which we communicate with each other are all contributing to an ever more confusing and frantic world. As a global health epidemiologist and science communicator, Professor Deonandan sees his role as bringing measurement and critical appraisal to whatever evidence exists to help us navigate this thickening soup of competing influences. Much of his scholastic output involves the epidemiology of reproductive technologies and the ethics of global health interventions, as well digital technologies in health care and the creative use of administrative data to answer questions surrounding population health. A significant portion of Professor Deonandan’s global health work has been conducted in the interior of Guyana, where he has worked to both measure and mitigate the health challenges experienced by remote Indigenous peoples. During the COVID pandemic, Professor Deonandan focused solely on communicating infection risk and vaccine science to the general public, assessing the potency of mitigation strategies, charting the trajectory of the epidemic, and weighing the changing evidence to advise on pandemic response policies. Professor Deonandan is also examining how artificial intelligence can improve pedagogy, with specific focus on using large language models to improve writing skills among health science students. His larger vision is to reimagine the wider role of the university in society in the face of rapid technological change.

Karen Eltis specializes on the impact of new technologies and artificial intelligence on democratic governance, cybersecurity, privacy, and access to justice from a comparative perspective.

Patrick Fafard has enjoyed a lengthy career that spans both government and academe. While with the Government of Canada he served as a Director General in the Intergovernmental Affairs Secretariat of the Privy Council Office. Earlier, he served in multiple capacities with three provincial governments, including as Executive Director of the Saskatchewan Commission on Medicare (2000-2001), and Executive Director, Policy and Planning, Saskatchewan Department of Health. Patrick’s academic interests are wide-ranging, including health, trade, and environmental policies, federalism and intergovernmental relations in Canada, the role of senior public health leaders in Commonwealth countries, global health governance to address the challenge of antimicrobial resistance, the governance of organ donation and transplantation, and developing public health political science.

Audrey Ferron Parayre's research and teaching interests are in the areas of human rights, health law, legal effectiveness and knowledge transfer. Her interdisciplinary background has led her to use empirical research methods, both qualitative and quantitative, in her various research projects. Her current research focuses on women's reproductive health and law, including obstetric and gynecological violence and how the law can be mobilized to prevent it.

Professor Gilbert's research interests lie primarily in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, with a particular emphasis on equality rights, reproductive rights, medical assistance in dying (MAiD), sexual violence, and safe sport/abuse in sport. Her most recent work considers best practices in codes of conduct that focus on sexual violence, with a particular emphasis on sexual violence and abuse in all levels of sport in Canada. She has also recently written on the impact of conscience protections on access to contraception, abortion and MAiD in Canada. She clerked for Chief Justice Antonio Lamer at the Supreme Court of Canada and Mr. Justice Robertson at the Federal Court of Appeal. She is President of the Board of “Women Help Women”, an international abortion service provider. She also sits on the Boards of Dying with Dignity Canada and Fòs Feminista.

Michelle Giroux's research focuses on end-of-life care as well as filiation and the definition of the family. She works on topics related to assisted reproduction, including the fundamental right to know one’s origins and motherhood for others. She is interested in multidisciplinary approaches to analyzing law.

Vanessa Gruben is a professor in the Common Law Section of the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law. A recognized expert in Canadian health law and policy, her scholarship probes the law and ethics of assisted reproduction, harm reduction, organ donation and transplantation, and health care professional self-regulation. She is the co-editor of the 5th edition of Canada’s leading health law text, Canadian Health Law and Policy (LexisNexis, 2017), and co-author of Families and the Law in Canada: Cases and Commentary (Captus, 2019). She has been a member of the Health Professions Appeal and Review Board and the Health Services Appeal and Review Board. She currently serves as board member of the Canadian Health Coalition and of AMS Healthcare. She has appeared on behalf of Amnesty International Canada before the Supreme Court of Canada in Charkaoui v. Canada, [2007] 1 S.C.R. 350; Charkaoui v. Canada, [2008] 2 S.C.R. 326; Khadr v. Canada, [2010] SCC 3; and the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. Professor Gruben is a graduate of the University of Ottawa’s Common Law program. She clerked for Chief Justice Richard of the Federal Court of Appeal and then Justice Bastarache of the Supreme Court of Canada. She was called to the bar in Ontario in 2003, after which she practiced as an associate in the litigation group of a national law firm. She joined the Faculty of Law after graduating as a James Kent Scholar from Columbia University’s Master of Laws program.

Bridging the fields of international law, health law and human rights, Roojin's current research program examines normative interpretation and change in global health law. Her mixed methods and collaborative approach to research has led to the convening of several international conferences as well as publications across a range of venues, including in journals of public health and medicine, law and social science reviews, commissioned reports, foundational law textbooks, and public news and media outlets.

Adam R. Houston is a Canadian health & human rights advocate, specializing in access to medicines and the role of law in the response to infectious disease. He has worked with organizations across Canada and around the world on a wide range of issues, including global COVID-19 vaccine (in)equity, reconciling disparate human rights approaches towards HIV and tuberculosis, and United Nations accountability for the Haitian cholera epidemic. By day, he is the Medical Policy & Advocacy Advisor for Médecins sans frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) Canada.

Martha Jackman specializes in the area of constitutional law, with a particular focus on issues relating to women and other marginalized groups. She publishes primarily in the areas of socio-economic rights, equality and the Canadian Charter.

Jennifer M. Kilty is a Full Professor in the Department of Criminology, University of Ottawa. A critical prison studies scholar, her research examines criminalization, punishment, and incarceration—often at the nexus of health and mental health. Author of over 75 articles and book chapters, she has published works on conditions of confinement, carceral segregation practices, the criminalization of HIV nondisclosure, prison education and pedagogy, and the mental health experiences of criminalized people. Her edited and authored books include: Demarginalizing Voices: Commitment, Emotion and Action in Qualitative Research (2014, UBC Press), Within the Confines: Women and the Law in Canada (2014, Women’s Press), Containing Madness: Gender and ‘Psy’ in Institutional Contexts (2018, Palgrave), and The Enigma of a Violent Woman: A Critical Examination of the Case of Karla Homolka (2016, Routledge). She is currently co-investigator on a 7 year SSHRC partnership grant entitled Prison Transparency Project which is a comparative study of prison transparency in seven research sites across Canada, Argentina, and Spain. The project aims to examine both formal mechanisms and informal practices that promote the movement of information in and out of carceral sites, both for accountability purposes and to defend the rights and freedoms of incarcerated persons.

Jamie Chai Yun Liew is an expert in immigration, refugee and citizenship law, as well as administrative law and public law. Her current research examines the meaning of citizenship, legal barriers for stateless persons to obtain citizenship/nationality, gendered implications of Canadian law on migrants, and how Canada’s immigration and refugee system marginalizes those navigating the process. She is currently completing a book manuscript on statelessness and the law.

Jason Millar is an Associate Professor in the School of Engineering Design and Teaching Innovation at the University of Ottawa, with a cross-appointment in the Department of Philosophy. He holds the Canada Research Chair in the Ethical Engineering of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) and is Director of the Canadian Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Ethical Design Lab (CRAiEDL.ca). He researches the ethical engineering of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), with a focus on empowering engineers to integrate ethical thinking into their daily engineering workflow. Jason’s work focuses primarily on the ethics, policy and the ethical engineering of automated vehicles, artificial intelligence, healthcare robotics, social and military robotics. Jason has a degree in engineering physics, and worked for several years as an engineer before turning his full-time attention to issues in philosophy and applied ethics.

Jason Nickerson is the Humanitarian Representative to Canada for Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), based in Ottawa. Jason is appointed as a Clinical Scientist at the Bruyère Research Institute in Ottawa and as an Adjunct Professor of Common Law at the University of Ottawa. He leads MSF’s humanitarian diplomacy in Canada and provides advice on humanitarian operations, medical advocacy and policy, and access to medicines to MSF’s operations in more than 70 countries affected by crises. Jason has over 10 years’ clinical experience as a respiratory therapist working in adult critical care and anesthesia and has worked extensively in global public health response in Canada and internationally during armed conflicts, disease epidemics, and sudden onset disasters. He is widely quoted in international news outlets on a variety of global health and health policy issues including COVID-19, access to pain medicines for safe anesthesia and palliative care, access to affordable medicines, science policy, and humanitarian assistance in natural disasters, armed conflicts, refugee crises, and disease epidemics such as Ebola.

Professor Oguamanam has diverse interdisciplinary research interests in the areas of global knowledge governance in general, especially as manifested in the dynamics of intellectual property and technology law with emphasis on biodiversity, biotechnology, including agricultural biotechnology. He identifies the policy and practical contexts for the exploration of the intersections of knowledge systems, particularly western science and the traditional knowledge of indigenous and local communities within the broader development discourse and paradigm. He is interested in the global institutional and regime dynamics for negotiating access and distributional challenges regarding the optimization of benefits of innovation by stakeholders. He has written and published several articles on international intellectual property law-making, biotechnology in the context of health and agriculture, indigenous peoples, indigenous knowledge, farmers’ rights, access and benefit sharing over genetic resources, environmental law and biodiversity conservation, the policy and legal intersections of traditional and hi-tech agricultural practices, documentation and digitization of local knowledge systems, globalization, complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), medical ethics, nutrition, public health law and policy, colonialism and the legal profession.

I am a political scientist who is interested in health politics and health policy. I have specific interests in how citizens can affect health policy issues. I am especially interested in illnesses that affect marginalized communities, such as HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C. I am currently completing a SSHRC-funded project on “contested illnesses”, including autism and Multiple Chemical Sensitivities. My non-health related interests include methods of citizen engagement and citizen participation, the role of the voluntary sector, and the influence of interest groups and social movements.

Professor J. Craig Phillips engages in scholarship and service through the lens of human rights and decolonization, which informs his community-engaged approach to research. He is an expert in curriculum development and was senior co-chair of undergraduate curriculum renewal at the School of Nursing. He co-led an evidence-informed curriculum renewal that was designed to maximize the engagement of students, faculty members, and community partners. This work resulted in the creation of the Ottawa Model for Curriculum Development, which included a systematic review of curriculum revision literature and logic model development. Professor Phillips is also co-director of the International Nursing Network for HIV Research and an investigator at the Centre for Research on Health and Nursing, a partnership between the University of Ottawa and the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA). His research focuses on the ecosocial context of health as a human right: he has documented social factors influencing health outcomes among marginalized populations, primarily persons living with HIV in Botswana, Canada, Nigeria, and the United States. He has over two decades’ experience as a nurse or nurse practitioner working with persons living with HIV and/or mental illnesses in the United States and Canada.

Dr. Monique Potvin Kent is a multi-disciplinary applied public health researcher who focuses on the prevention of obesity and other chronic diseases by examining food and nutrition policies and the commercial determinants of health. Dr. Potvin Kent is an expert in food and beverage marketing targeted at children and adolescents, the healthfulness of this marketing, and whether current policies are protecting children on various media channels such as on television and in digital media, and in child settings such as schools. She also has a clinical background in eating disorders and cognitive behavioural therapy.

Dr. Teresa Scassa is the Canada Research Chair in Information Law and Policy at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law. She is the author or co-author of several books, including Canadian Trademark Law (2d edition, LexisNexis 2015), and Electronic Commerce and Internet Law in Canada (CCH Canadian Ltd. 2012) (winner of the 2013 Walter Owen Book Prize). She is a past member of the External Advisory Committee of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, and of the Canadian Government Advisory Committee on Open Government. She is a member of the GEOTHINK research partnership, and has written widely in the areas of intellectual property law, law and technology, and privacy.

My topics of study are the history of sex education, contraception and abortion in Canada. I use a feminist translational approach that connects the local to the global. I am currently working on a history of the birth control pill in Canada between 1960–1980 and its impact on young, single university women. I also am researching "abortion tourism" or the travel women undertake to access abortion services at clinics within Canada.

Dr. Singh is one of Canada's first physicians to specialize in clinical artificial intelligence. He is an emergency physician at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto and holds a Masters in Computer Science degree from the University of Toronto. He is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto in both the Temerty Faculty of Medicine and the Division of Computer Science and is an emerging scholar helping to innovate the regulatory, privacy, and ethical landscape for AI in Canada and beyond.

Marie-Eve Sylvestre's research focuses on the punitive regulation of poverty and social conflicts related to the occupation of public spaces in Canada (including conflicts related to homelessness, sex work, drug and alcohol use and political protests), as well as alternatives to criminalization including in the Indigenous context.

Tracy Vaillancourt holds the Canada Research Chair in School-Based Mental Health and Violence Prevention. Her research examines the links between bullying and mental health, with a particular focus on social neuroscience.

João Velloso teaches sentencing and “sanctioning”, legal research methods, criminology and socio-legal studies. He has a multidisciplinary background in law, criminology, sociology, anthropology and communication. He works in the areas of criminal law and sentencing, critical criminology and socio-legal studies, more particularly sociology and anthropology of law. His empirical research deals with the penalization of protesters and migrants (deportation and detention), access to justice in detention, and the regulation of cannabis. He is particularly interested in the governance of security through the use of administrative law and the deterioration of rights resulting from these penal configurations which operate alternatively and in addition to criminal justice.

Dr. Monnica T. Williams is a board-certified licensed clinical psychologist and Associate Professor in the School of Psychology, where she is the Canada Research Chair in Mental Health Disparities. She is also the Clinical Director of the Behavioral Wellness Clinic in Connecticut, where she provides supervision and training to clinicians for empirically-supported treatments. Dr. Williams’ research focuses on minority mental health, culture, and psychopathology. Current projects include the assessment of race-based trauma, unacceptable thoughts in OCD, improving cultural competence in mental health care services, and interventions to reduce racism. This includes her work as a PI in a multisite study of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD. She also gives diversity trainings nationally for clinical psychology programs, scientific conferences, and community organizations.

Dr. Kumanan Wilson is a specialist in General Internal Medicine at The Ottawa Hospital; Chief Executive Officer/Chief Scientific Officer, Bruyère Research Institute; Vice President Research & Academic, Bruyère Continuing Care; Chief Scientific Officer, CANImmunize Inc.; and Faculty of Medicine Clinical Research Chair in Digital Health Innovation, University of Ottawa. He is the co-founder of CANImmunize Inc., a science-based technology company spun out from The Ottawa Hospital in 2019. To help Canadians keep track of their vaccinations, the team developed CANImmunize, a pan-Canadian digital immunization tracking system available as a mobile app and through a web portal. Dr. Wilson’s research focuses on digital health, immunization, pandemic preparedness and public health policy and innovation. His research on immunization has explored social media’s impact on vaccine hesitancy, evaluation of vaccine safety using health services data and vaccine policy, including advocating for vaccine injury compensation. Other research interests include blood safety and newborn screening, health ethics, law and policy.

Dr. Michael C. Wolfson was awarded a Canada Research Chair in Population Health Modelling / Populomics in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa in 2010. He formerly held the position of Assistant Chief Statistician, Analysis and Development, at Statistics Canada. Dr. Wolfson holds a BSc in mathematics, computer science and economics from the University of Toronto, and a PhD from Cambridge University. His areas of expertise include program review and evaluation, tax/transfer policy, pension policy, income distribution, design of health information systems, microsimulation modelling of socio-economic policy and health dynamics, and analysis of the determinants of health. He has authored numerous articles addressing topics such as assessing the inter-generational equity of Canada’s pension and health care systems, the design of an appropriate system of health statistics, modelling disease determinants and treatments, income inequality and polarization trends, and income and income inequality as determinants of population health.