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Postdoctoral studies

Postdoctoral students at the uOttawa Faculty of Law are offered a wide array of opportunities to broaden their specialized research or explore avenues complementary to their training.

The postdoctoral research environment

The University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law is the largest in Canada, boasting a distinguished and diverse assembly of faculty members at the forefront of legal research and education. Through their scholarship, many of our professors have contributed to the transformation of Canada’s legal systems as well as the ways in which law is practiced, taught and conceived. Our law school boasts a thriving research environment, hosting numerous research chairs, and a broad and deep assortment of centres of research excellence. Located in the heart of downtown Ottawa, within walking distance of Parliament Hill and the Supreme Court of Canada, the University of Ottawa provides the best opportunity in the world to study Canada’s legal systems in English or in French.

Postdoctoral students at the uOttawa Faculty of Law are offered a wide array of opportunities to broaden their specialized research or explore avenues complementary to their training. Our dynamic and inclusive research environment invites postdocs to take part in invigorating activities such as the new Autumn School on the Methodology of Research in Law, and the Faculty of Law Writing Group. Postdoctoral fellows also find repeated opportunities to be invited to speak in regular conference series, or to participate in work-in-progress workshops. They can also access the services of the Research Office and benefit from our communications support to disseminate their research and accomplishments. We are proud of the level of excellence displayed by our researchers, and are eager to add new voices to our research enterprise.

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Sparking Conversation: Postdoctoral Fellows Share their Experiences in Research

Every year, many postdoctoral fellows pass through the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law. We’ve invited each of them to tell us about themselves. We asked them about their projects, their influences, who they’re currently reading, and more. We’ve greatly enjoyed seeing how these researchers describe their work in their own words and we think you will too.
Visit our new web page, Sparking Conversation.

Postdoctoral fellows based at the Faculty of Law, Common Law Section

Ashley Barnes

Ashley Barnes

Gordon F. Henderson Postdoctoral Fellow (2022-2023)
Human Rights Research and Education Centre
Faculty of Law, Common Law Section
University of Ottawa

Ashley Barnes is a lawyer and scholar whose work focuses on access to justice and remedies under international law. She completed her SJD at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. Her research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Council of International Law, among others. In 2017, she was a Visiting Scholar at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, University of Cambridge. She was previously a Schulich Fellow at the Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University.

Her work has appeared and is forthcoming in international peer-reviewed journals and she authors an annual case digest on private international law for the Canadian Yearbook of International Law. She has presented her research at venues in North America and Europe, most recently as a ‘New Voices’ panelist at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law. Ashley’s academic work builds on extensive professional background with government in international legal and policy issues, as well as serving as a Judicial Law Clerk at the Federal Court of Canada and experience with the International Criminal Court.

During her fellowship at the HRREC, she will be expanding her work into new access to justice challenges, including the timely issue of compensating those directly harmed by climate change in domestic and international forums.

Email: [email protected]

Jacqueline Briggs

Jacqueline Briggs

Postdoctoral Fellow (2021-2024)
Faculty of Law, Common Law Section
University of Ottawa

Jacqueline Briggs is a Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC) Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Common Law under the supervision of Professor Constance Backhouse.

As a historian of ‘administrative colonialism’ in Canada, Jacquie’s critical approach to the study of the criminal justice system focuses on intersections between federal administrators and the legal profession. Her postdoctoral project is a history of the Department of Justice from the late 19th century to the present, exploring the public interest role of lawyers-as-bureaucrats.

Jacquie completed her PhD in Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto in 2021. Her dissertation project was a critical socio-legal history of a previously-unknown legal aid program operated by the Department of Indian Affairs (DIA) between the 1880s and the late 1960s. DIA legal aid provided defence counsel for Indigenous persons charged with murder in hundreds of high-stakes trials that could result in execution. The legal aid study not only assembles a legal history of the program from over 600 case files and policy records, it also interrogates the ways in which settler-colonialism shaped the administration of justice via the administration of Indigenous affairs.

Jacquie has taught courses in Law & Society, Legal History, and Criminology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Concordia University in Montreal, and at the University of Toronto. Born in the territory of the Dish with One Spoon wampum covenant (Toronto), she identifies as a settler person of Irish and English ancestry. A proud alumna of the Decolonizing Education (2017-2018) and Indigenous Research Methods (2019-2020) certificates from the Centre for Indigegogy (Wilfrid Laurier U.), Jacquie continues her decolonizing journey via participating in the Centre’s SSHRCC-funded digital storytelling project with the ReVision arts centre (U. Guelph).

Jacquie’s work on colonialism and the criminal justice system in Canada has been published in the Canadian Historical Review (2019), Studies in Law, Politics & Society (2020), and the Toronto Star (2016). Her 2019 article was awarded the Political History Article Prize by the Canadian History Association, and the Peter Oliver Prize by the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History.

Meet Postdoc Jacqueline Briggs.

Email:  [email protected]

Jane Ezirigwe

Jane Ezirigwe

Postdoctoral Fellow on Global Data Governance for Food and Agriculture (2022-2023)
Open AIR, The Open African Innovation Research Network
Centre for Law, Technology and Society
Faculty of Law, Common Law Section
University of Ottawa

Jane Ezirigwe is an Open AIR Postdoctoral Fellow on Global Data Governance for Food and Agriculture. She is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (NIALS) and an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at Bingham University, Nigeria. Jane is a member of the AfCFTA Advisory Council. She is also an Olu Akinkugbe Fellow on Business Law in Africa, a Fellow of Young African Leaders Initiative, and an International Bar Association Scholar.

Jane holds a PhD in law from the University of Cape Town, an LLM from the University of London, and an MBA and LLB from ESUT Business School and University of Abuja. She has over 16 years of experience in legal research, legal advocacy, legal education, as well as in mobilizing and translating knowledge for wider usage. Her research interests are in the areas of food & agricultural law, international trade, and natural resource development. She is also committed to mainstreaming gender in her research and is focused on using socio-legal methods to produce evidence-based research. Jane provides consulting services to Women’s Aid Collective, a Nigerian NGO advocating for women’s rights. She also provides support services to Small Scale Women Farmers Organisation in Nigeria, a network of over 500,000 women farmers. She has won several academic and research awards for her contributions to the development of law and has many publications.

Former postdoctoral fellows

Ghuna Bdiwi

Ghuna Bdiwi

Alex Trebek Postdoctoral Fellow (2022-2023)
Human Rights Research and Education Centre
Refugee Hub
Faculty of Law, Common Law Section
University of Ottawa

Karni Chagal-Feferkorn

Karni Chagal-Feferkorn

Scotiabank Postdoctoral Fellow in AI and Regulation (2020-2022)
University of Ottawa AI + Society Initiative

Centre for Law, Technology and Society
Faculty of Law, Common Law Section
University of Ottawa

Michael Da Silva

Michael Da Silva

Alex Trebek Postdoctoral Fellow in AI and Healthcare (2020-2022)
Centre for Law, Technology and Society
Faculty of Law, Common Law Section
University of Ottawa

View his current biography at the University of Southampton.

David Hughes

David Hughes

Alex Trebek Postdoctoral Fellow (2020-2022)
Human Rights Research and Education Centre

Refugee Hub
Faculty of Law, Common Law Section
University of Ottawa

David Hughes has accepted an Assistant Professor Position at the Canadian Forces College

Lindsey McKay

Lindsey McKay

Postdoctoral Research Fellow (2017-2018)
Faculty of Law
University of Ottawa

View her current biography at Thompson Rivers University.

Yvonne Ndelle

Yvonne Ndelle

Postdoctoral Fellow (2022-2023)
Open AIR, The Open African Innovation Research Network
Centre for Law, Technology and Society
Faculty of Law, Common Law Section
University of Ottawa

Program Manager, Open AIR and Research Fellow, Open AIR

Cristiano Therrien

Cristiano Therrien

Scotiabank Postdoctoral Fellow in AI and Regulation (2022-2023)
University of Ottawa AI + Society Initiative
Centre for Law, Technology and Society
Faculty of Law, Common Law Section
University of Ottawa

Amanda van Beinum

Amanda van Beinum

Postdoctoral Fellow (2021-2023)
Centre for Health Law, Policy and Ethics
Faculty of Law, Common Law Section
University of Ottawa

View her current biography at York University.

Contact us

For questions regarding postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Ottawa, please contact the Office of the Vice-Provost, Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies at postdoc@uottawa.ca.

For questions specifically related to postdocs at the Faculty of Law, please contact [email protected].