Centre for Feminist Legal Studies at Allard Law UBC

06/03/2025

(AWARDS 3/3): Marlee Kline Essay Prize

Deadline: 5 pm, TUESDAY, JUNE 17, 2025

“The various intersections between gender, race, class, sexual orientation, and other differentiating characteristics, will affect how and when all women experience sexism.” (Marlee Kline, 1989)

The Centre for Feminist Legal Studies will award a $250 prize to the best essay written by a J.D. student and a $250 prize to the best essay written by a graduate student attending the Peter A. Allard School of Law during the 2024-2025 academic year, addressing the themes identified in the above quotation in relation to a topic dealing with law or legal regulation. The prize is offered in the name of Marlee Kline, a feminist UBC law professor who died in November 2001. The essay should be written for a UBC course, seminar, or directed research project and must incorporate feminist research and analysis.

Length: The essay shall be between 4,000 and 10,000 words, and shall be typewritten and double-spaced, using 12 point font.

Selection: The submissions will be reviewed by a committee of feminist law professors.

Submission: Students should send essay submissions to [email protected] by 5pm on Tuesday, June 17, 2025.

06/03/2025

(AWARDS 2/3) Auriol Gurner Young Memorial Award in Law

Deadline: 5 pm, TUESDAY, JUNE 17, 2025

The Auriol Gurner Young Memorial Award in Law is generously endowed in memory of Auriol Gurner Young for students in the J.D. Program who have made significant contributions to feminism and the law, for instance through academic achievement, volunteer work, community activism, or work with a feminist organization.

This $3000 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. Auriol started her university education in her 50’s, graduating with First Class Honours in 1983. She loved life, people, and ideas.

Nominations or applications for the award must be submitted to the CFLS Awards Committee by Tuesday, June 17, 2025. Please submit via email to [email protected]. Please provide a letter explaining the candidate’s contributions to feminism and law and attach the candidate’s resume. Applicants for the Hilda Janzen Memorial Award who are current J.D. students will automatically be considered for this award, as well.

06/03/2025

Attention Allard JD students: the CFLS is proud to advertise three feminist prizes and awards with upcoming deadlines! Please check them out and apply:

First up: The Hilda Janzen Memorial Award in Feminist Legal Studies.

An annual award of $18,000 is offered by Sonya Wall in memory of Hilda Janzen. The award is for a student in any year of the Peter A. Allard School of Law JD Program, including first year, who has achieved good academic standing, has demonstrated leadership and community involvement in feminist and/or legal issues, and faces challenges, financial or systemic, in accessing or continuing legal education.

Please note that the deadline for the Hilda Janzen Memorial Award is 4PM on TUESDAY, JUNE 17, 2025. Information and application procedures are available here: https://allard.ubc.ca/student-portal/jd-program/funding-your-studies/awards-and-scholarships-students-continuing-jd-program

Questions about this award should be directed to [email protected].

The following awards and scholarships require application and are for continuing students in the JD program. If you have not begun studies, please see Entrance Awards and Scholarship

05/15/2025

Please join York University on Friday, May 23rd from 3:00 to 5:00 PM EST (12:00 to 2:00 PM PST) for a Zoom webinar with CFLS Affiliate Dr. Jocelyn Stacey.

Dr. Stacey will be presenting her research alongside other panelists. This panel will draw together critical scholars from law, geography, and anthropology with community partners and land-based practitioners who are working to restore Indigenous jurisdiction in the context of the climate crisis – and are reconceptualizing what constitutes 'critical infrastructure' along the way.

To register, please visit: https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/vYZJnzrET8qrSulvXZL6xQ #/registration

04/03/2025

Today, April 3, is UBC Giving Day! The CFLS is one of two funds being championed by the Peter A. Allard School of Law. The first $5,000 to the CFLS in donations today will be matched by anonymous donors. As well, when 25 UBC faculty and staff donate to the law school's champions, a $1,130 gift from the Allard Law Dean and Allard Law DAE Team will be unlocked, to be shared between the CFLS and the St. Pierre, Romilly, Nathanson Entrance Award in Law for Black Students.

This UBC Giving Day, your donation can expand the Centre’s reach, enabling new programming, research initiatives and community partnerships. With your support today, the Centre for Feminist Legal Studies can continue to be a leader in advancing equality for women and girls, developing meaningful connections between academia and activism.

This UBC Giving Day, the Peter A.

04/01/2025

In this Q&A, we speak with law students and professors about the impact and the importance of the continuing work at the Centre for Feminist Legal Studies.

03/31/2025

Reminder - this Friday, April 4th, please join the CFLS for a lecture on "The Politics of Naming: Gender-Specific vs. Gender-Neutral Language in Legal Responses to Domestic Violence as a World of Work Issue". The lecture is from 12:30pm to 1:30pm PST in DLA Piper Hall, Room 104 at Allard Hall or via Zoom.

The lecture will be delivered by Sofia Cornejo, PhD Candidate at the Peter A. Allard School of Law and winner of the CFLS Graduate Student Speaker Competition!

For more information and the Zoom registration link, please visit https://allard.ubc.ca/about-us/events-calendar/cfls-lecture-politics-naming

03/29/2025

On Tuesday, April 2 from 5:00pm to 7:00pm, Green College will be hosting The Whole Cloth Reading Series. For their final event of the year, The Whole Cloth Reading Series welcomes you to a community reading of Pat Lowther’s A Stone Diary in collaboration with Dead Poets Reading Series.

On the 50th Anniversary of Vancouver poet Pat Lowther’s death, attendees will gather in her memory to read her final collection A Stone Diary together. For this event, listeners take turns becoming readers as we voice each poem. There will be copies of the book for attendees to read from and follow along on the page. Attendees will be joined by the community around the Dead Poets Reading Series, a series dedicated to keeping the work of dead poets alive and in our ears.

Pat Lowther's fourth book, A Stone Diary (Oxford University Press, 1977), was published two years after she was murdered at age 40 by her husband. This collection represented a potential new stage for the poet, who held promise as a major presence in Canadian poetry. Her previous books, This Difficult Flowering (1968), The Age of the Bird (1972), and Milk Stone (1974), demonstrated her interest in mothering, relationships, and nature. A Stone Diary deepens these concerns of feminism, power imbalance, and the delicacy of life and includes a series of poems concerning Chilean politics and others addressed to Neruda. "Lowther is a poet very conscious of destructive forces, but is herself essentially a preserver and renewer," writes Elizabeth Jones in Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender.

For more information, please visit https://greencollege.ubc.ca/civicrm/event/info%3Fid%3D1769%26reset%3D1

03/24/2025

On Friday, April 4th, please join the CFLS for a lecture on "The Politics of Naming: Gender-Specific vs. Gender-Neutral Language in Legal Responses to Domestic Violence as a World of Work Issue". The lecture is from 12:30pm to 1:30pm PST in DLA Piper Hall, Room 104 at Allard Hall or via Zoom.

The lecture will be delivered by Sofia Cornejo, PhD Candidate at the Peter A. Allard School of Law and winner of the CFLS Graduate Student Speaker Competition!

For more information and the Zoom registration link, please visit https://allard.ubc.ca/about-us/events-calendar/cfls-lecture-politics-naming

03/24/2025

The Centre for Feminist Legal Studies at the Peter A. Allard School of Law is breaking barriers and building bridges for a more inclusive legal landscape. Since 1997, the Centre has brought students, scholars and activists together to advance feminist legal perspectives and address social justice issues.

On UBC Giving Day, April 3, your donation can expand the Centre’s reach, enabling new programming, research initiatives and community partnerships. Learn more: https://givingday.ubc.ca/31090/gd2025/180688/centre-for-feminist-legal-studies

03/17/2025

On Thursday, March 20, please join the CFLS and UBC Emeritus College for Law Over Time! The event will be held at Coach House, Green College, UBC and livestreamed.

The speakers are:
Susan Boyd, Professor Emerita of Law, University of British Columbia
Fiona Kelly, Dean of Law, University of Alberta
Régine Tremblay, Associate Professor of Law, University of British Columbia
Reina Magistro Nadler, PhD student, Law, University of British Columbia, and a Resident Member of Green College

This series, co-hosted with UBC Emeritus College, brings together scholars who inhabit the same academic discipline or field of study, and are at different stages of their careers, to talk about how the boundaries separating their field of specialization from other fields have shifted over time. This fifth event in the series will stage a conversation between scholars of Law. The moderator will ask the panelists a series of questions about their perspectives on the discipline, and the discussion will be opened at an early stage to members of the audience. The goal of the event is to grasp the interdisciplinary nexus that is "Law" in Canadian and other universities and to peer into possible futures of the field.

For more information and the livestream link, please visit: https://greencollege.ubc.ca/civicrm/event/info%3Fid%3D1760%26reset%3D1

03/08/2025

Today, March 8th, is International Women's Day!

The Government of Canada's theme for today is "Strength in Every Story". It highlights the importance of amplifying the voices of all women, particularly those who continue to face barriers to success.

The United Nations’ theme for today is "For ALL Women and Girls: Rights. Equality. Empowerment". It calls for action to unlock equal rights, power, and opportunities for all, celebrating a feminist future where no one is left behind.