Chair in Feminist Legal Studies
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Professor
Susan Boyd
Chair in Feminist
Legal Studies
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The University of British Columbia 's endowed Chair in Feminist Legal Studies is the first of its kind in Canada and one of the few such chairs in the world. Since 1992, the Chair has played an integral role in strengthening the existing base of feminist legal studies in UBC's Faculty of Law by expanding the research and teaching in this area. The Chair also provides the institutional commitment necessary to consolidate the feminist work undertaken in the Faculty and foster its continuing development. The Chair raises public awareness of women's issues at UBC and in the broader community through the development of a feminist understanding of day-to-day legal issues.
Professor Susan B. Boyd, the first incumbent of the Chair, has published extensively in the areas of feminist legal theory and family law. She has developed new courses on Feminist Legal Studies at both the LL.B. and graduate levels, and she includes feminist perspectives in her Family Law courses. She is also Director of the Centre for Feminist Legal Studies, which organizes a series of talks on feminist legal studies each year. Professor Boyd gives a number of talks herself in the university, at conferences and in wider communities. Her current research is on challenges to women's autonomy as mothers, as well as parenting law reform initiatives. Her books are Reaction and Resistance: Feminism, Law, and Social Change , Poverty: Rights, Social Citizenship and Legal Activism , Law and Families , Child Custody, Law, and Women's Work (2002), Challenging the Public/Private Divide: Feminism, Law, and Public Policy (1997), and an Annotated Bibliography of Canadian Feminist Literature on Law (1988-1998) (1999).
Overall, the Chair in Feminist Legal Studies provides a way to foster and support scholarship and learning directed toward the ongoing process of social change in relation to women's position in Canadian society. The benefits of this scholarship flow not only to those in the legal profession, but those involved in changes to social policy that are relevant to women.
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