Centre for Feminist Legal Studies at Allard Law UBC

10/09/2026

The CFLS is excited to welcome Professor Zoë Sinel for a lecture on the chapter “Love and Loss” from her new book, Just Feelings: A Tort Law Theory of Emotion, which explores what several key emotions—fear, spite, distress, pain, and regret—mean in tort law.

The discussion will span:
• How, as emotions enter the law of torts in a legally salient way, their core meanings must be juridical, thus demarcating the rightful and equal bounds of our just interactions.
• How love and loss appear to provide the basis for bereavement damages.
• A novel argument for a legitimate basis for bereavement damages not based on the feelings of love or grief.

📅 Friday, Oct 23 | 12:30 – 1:20 PM
📍 Fasken Classroom, Room 122 | Allard Hall & virtually

🎤 About the speaker
Zoë Sinel is an Associate Professor at Western Law. She researches and teaches in private law and legal theory, with a particular focus on the law of torts and its remedies.

Light lunch will be provided for in-person attendees. Check out the following link for full details and Zoom registration info: https://allard.ubc.ca/about-us/events-calendar/cfls-lecture-series-just-feelings-tort-law-emotion

10/05/2026

The CFLS is thrilled to welcome Professor Michelle Madden Dempsey, as part of her visit co-sponsored by Green College, for her lecture, “Sex, Wrongdoing, and Criminalization: Gaining Perspectives," which seeks to distinguish the question of what justifies sexual pe*******on from the question of what justifies various sociopolitical and legal responses to it.

📅 Wednesday, Oct 14 | 12:30 – 1:45 PM
📍 Fasken Classroom, Room 122 | Allard Hall & virtually

🎤 About the speaker
Michelle Madden Dempsey is a Professor of Law and Harold Reuschlein Scholar Chair at Villanova University. Dempsey teaches and writes in the areas of criminal law, feminist legal theory, and philosophy of law.

Light lunch will be provided for in-person attendees. Check out the following link for full details and Zoom registration: https://allard.ubc.ca/about-us/events-calendar/cfls-lecture-series-sex-wrongdoing-and-criminalization-gaining-perspectives

09/09/2026

The CFLS is pleased to welcome Professor Bethany Hastie to kick off this academic year’s lecture series for a talk on remedying sexual harassment.

The discussion will span:
• How human rights tribunals remain a primary vehicle through which individuals who experience sexual harassment may pursue legal redress and remedy.
• How, despite their creative potential, human rights tribunals appear to largely craft limited, individualistic, compensatory remedies for individuals who experience sexual harassment.
• How the creation of a more expansive and creative remedial space in human rights tribunals may play a more effective role in redressing sexual harassment as a systemic and structural issue in society.

📅 Tuesday, Sep 15 | 12:30 – 1:45 PM
📍 Fasken Classroom, Room 122 | Allard Hall & virtually

Light lunch will be provided for in-person attendees. See the following link for full details and Zoom registration link: https://allard.ubc.ca/about-us/events-calendar/cfls-lecture-series-remedying-sexual-harassment

09/05/2026

Kick off the academic year by joining the CFLS Feminist Tea Party! Connect with the Centre, meet faculty and peers engaged in feminist legal scholarship, and learn how to get involved with CFLS initiatives throughout the year.

Come enjoy tea, coffee, and bannock (gluten-free and dairy-free options will be available). There will also be prizes!

📅 Tuesday, Sep 8 | 12:30 – 1:45 PM
📍North Lawn (weather permitting) | Allard Hall

For the full event listing please visit the following link: https://allard.ubc.ca/about-us/events-calendar/cfls-feminist-tea-party-0

08/31/2026

The CFLS is pleased to announce the 2026 CFLS Award Winners!

🏆 Congratulations to Parul Kanwar, recipient of the 2026 Auriol Gurner Young Memorial Award. Parul is a second-year JD student who has demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to feminist advocacy, research, and community-building both before and during law school.

The award honours the memory of Auriol Gurner Young, who died in 2005 after a lengthy and determined struggle with cancer. She was a remarkable woman with a lifelong love of learning and a great intellectual curiosity. In her 50's, Auriol started her university education, graduating with first class honours in 1983. She loved life, people and ideas.

🏆 Congratulations to Brittany Fox, recipient of the 2026 Marlee Kline Essay Prize (JD Student) for her essay “Clearing Up the Grey Area: A Guidelines-Based Reimbursement Model for Greater Certainty and Equity in Canadian Surrogacy Law.”

The prize is offered in the name of Marlee Kline, a feminist professor at the Allard School of Law who died in November 2001 after a lengthy and determined struggle with leukemia. Her work on feminist legal theory and critical race theory, child welfare law and policy, law’s continued colonialism, and restructuring of the social welfare state is internationally acclaimed.

🔗 Visit the following link to read their full profiles: https://allard.ubc.ca/research/research-centres-and-programs/centre-feminist-legal-studies/students/student-awards-prizes

07/06/2026

Save the date!

Mark your calendars! The CFLS is preparing to host a series of events from May 11-14 to celebrate its 30th anniversary.

We will be distributing further details in the following months, so keep an eye out. We would love for you to attend and look forward to celebrating this achievement together.

📅 May 11-14, 2027
📍 Allard Hall & TDB

05/21/2026

Applications for CFLS award and prizes are officially open!

The CFLS encourages current students at the Peter A. Allard School of Law to apply and/or share these opportunities.
- Auriol Gurner Young Memorial Award (available to J.D. students)
- Marlee G. Kline Essay Prizes (available to both J.D. and graduate students)

📅 Deadline: Wednesday, June 17 | 5:00 PM PST

🔗 For full details and submission guidelines, check out the following link: https://allard.ubc.ca/research/research-centres-and-programs/centre-feminist-legal-studies/students/student-awards-prizes

We look forward to reading your submissions! If you have any questions, do not hesitate to reach out.

05/13/2026

On May 19, join CFLS Visiting Scholar, Professor Hilde Tubex, for lunch and discussion of her research about life sentences and the experiences of women and Indigenous peoples in Australian prisons.

📅 Tuesday, May 19 | 12:00 – 1:00 PM
📍Terrace Lounge, 4th Floor | Allard Hall

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to reach out.

05/11/2026

On Friday, May 15th, from 12:30 pm to 2:00 pm PST in Room 122 at Allard Hall, Oludolapo Makinde (PhD Candidate, Peter A. Allard School of Law and Liu Scholar, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs) will present “Algorithmic Harm and AI Governance: An Intersectional Feminist Analysis of the EU and Brazil.”

This lecture will examinel, through an intersectional feminist lens, how the European Union and Brazil are approaching AI governance and whether these frameworks adequately address algorithmic harm shaped by gender, race, class, and other inequalities.

For more information, click here:

This talk with examine through an intersectional feminist lens how the European Union and Brazil are approaching the governance of AI systems.

04/07/2026

Join Green College (Coach House, 6201 Cecil Green Park Rd) on Thursday, April 9th from 5:00pm to 6:20pm for "Secrets on our Doorstep: Vancouver and the Shadow on the World Cup." At this event, journalist Matthew Hall will discuss his research into abuse in sports and systemic cover-ups by sports organizations and educational institutions across North America, with a focus on the 2026 World Cup games.

As Vancouver prepares to host 2026 World Cup games, a chilling local history haunts the celebration. In 2008, Canada Soccer and the Vancouver Whitecaps quietly severed ties with coach Bob Birarda in response to multiple complaints of predatory behaviour. Institutional silence allowed Birarda to coach local girls for another decade until whistleblowers, like Matthew Hall, lifted the curtain on this history of abuse.

For further information, please visit this link: https://greencollege.ubc.ca/events/secrets-our-doorstep-vancouver-and-shadow-world-cup