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Gillian Calder

Professor 
Acting Chair, Gender Studies (2023-2024)


Gillian Calder

Gillian Calder


Tel: 250-472-5127
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 Faculty of Law
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PO Box 1700, STN CSC
Victoria, BC  V8W 2Y2
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I joined the Faculty of Law in 2004 from the practice of Aboriginal law with Mandell Pinder, LLP in Vancouver. My legal training has included a year of clerking at the BC Supreme Court in the 1997-1998 term, articles and practice with Russell and Dumoulin, LLP (as it then was) and teaching at the University of New Brunswick (2001-2002). Since coming to Victoria, I have taught Legal Process, Constitutional Law, Family Law, Civil Liberties and the Charter, Advanced Family Law and Sexual Orientation and the Law. I am deeply committed to the study of critical legal pedagogy and served as Associate Dean, Academic and Student Relations from July 2015 – June 2020.

General Research Interests

I am interested in legal imagination, theories of constitutional law, law's impact on our understanding of the family and family formation, and storytelling. In general, I have focused my scholarly energy in these broad interests around three questions. The first is about how the form and structures of particular legal regimes or systems are determinative of the kinds of questions that we ask of law. That is, what does it say, for example, about our societal commitments to gender equality and shared care-giving that we deliver a benefit for maternity and parental leave through Employment Insurance? Through this and related projects I have had the chance to think carefully about the role that intersecting legal regimes play in our understanding of substantive and formal equality in Canadian law.

The second question that I have pursued in my scholarship, teaching and administrative work to date, examines the role of critical legal pedagogy, and in particular experiential learning, as a means of reaching the 21st century law student. This work, and primarily its equity and equality dimensions, has lead to a research agenda that includes both qualitative and quantitative analysis of the institutional and external factors influencing critical engagement in Canadian law schools today.

Finally, and related closely to the second question, a third aspect of my scholarship to date has been about the relationship between performance, pedagogy and law. Here I have been engaged in a more theoretical exploration of particular methodologies of learning law ranging from political theatre through non-textual sources, primarily to interrogate the relationship between how we learn, experience and practice law and what we understand law to be.

All of these questions are asked and considered through an approach to law and legal education that is grounded in feminist, anti-oppressive, and anti-colonialist practice.  In particular I am very conscious of the role that Indigenous ways of knowing and being plays in my life, work and teaching.

Curriculum vitae

  • BA Honours – UBC (1993)
  • LLB – UBC (1997)
  • Diploma in University Teaching – University of New Brunswick (2002)
  • LLM – Osgoode Hall Law School, York University (2003)

Access Gillian's research publications through the (SSRN).

  • (2022) 45(2) Dalhousie Law Journal, forthcoming.

  • (2022) 11(1) feminists@law. 

  • Bandes, Madeira, Temple and Kidd White, eds, Research Handbook on Law and Emotion (London: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2021), pp. 62-79.

  • “,” The Times Colonist, August 13, 2021. 

  • “” Policy Options Politique, November 3, 2020 (with Irehobhude O. Iyioha).

  • “To the Inclusion of All Others:  Story-telling “Motherhood” with Katniss, Hermione, Candy Quackenbush, Meggie, Tanya and the Warrior Cats.” (Thriving Mothers/Depriving Mothers, Demeter Press, October 2020).

  • “” Reconciliation Syllabus, December 17, 2019 (blog post).

  • Elizabeth Adjin-Tettey, Gillian Calder, Patricia Cochran, Maneesha Deckha, Freya Kodar, Hester Lessard, Kate Plyley and Mark Zion, “ (2018) 56(1) University of Alberta Law Review 263-274.

  • Kathy Chan and Gillian Calder, “,” The Times Colonist, June 17, 2018.

  • “” Reconciliation Syllabus, January 7, 2018 (blog post).

  • Gillian Calder and Susan B. Boyd, , The Times Colonist, January 3, 2018.

  • Gillian Calder and Rebecca Johnson The Times Colonist, April 6, 2016.

  • ReconciliationSyllabus, April 4, 2016 (blog post).

  • “Diversity in our idea of family: What is family law?” ReconciliationSyllabus, July 9, 2015 (blog post).

  • “” ReconciliationSyllabus, July 8, 2015 (blog post).

  • Gillian Calder and Rebecca Johnson, “” Canadian Lawyer, June 15, 2015.

  • “” The Times Colonist, February 7, 2015.

  • Gillian Calder and Lori G. Beaman, eds., Polygamy’s Rights and Wrongs: Perspectives on Harm, Family and Law (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2014).

  • “Conclusion: ‘To the Exclusion of All Others’: Polygamy, Monogamy and the Legal Family in Canada” in Calder and Beaman, eds., Polygamy’s Rights and Wrongs: Perspectives on Harm, Family and Law (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2014) pp. 215-233.

  • “Barbarism exists within our borders, too,” The Times Colonist, November 12, 2014.

  • “” (2014) 28(1) Canadian Journal of Family Law 113-134.

  • “” September 2014, The Advocate, 731-736.

  • “Performance, Pedagogy and Law: Theatre of the Oppressed in the Law School Classroom” in Zenon Bańkowski and Maksymilian Del Mar, eds., The Moral Imagination and the Legal Life: Beyond Text in Legal Education (London: Ashgate, 2013) pp. 215-254.

  • Suzanne Bouclin, Gillian Calder and Sharon Cowan, “” in Zenon Bańkowski, Maksymilian Del Mar and Paul Maharg, eds., The Arts and the Legal Academy: Beyond Text in Legal Education (London: Ashgate, 2013) pp. 69-85.

  • Gillian Calder and Rebecca Johnson, Elizabeth Sheehy and Jane Doe, eds., in Sexual Assault Law, Practice and Activism in a Post-Jane Doe Era (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2011), in press.
  • (2010) 142 Canadian Theatre Review 44-49.
  • (2009) 21(1) Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 55-89.
  • "'Finally I Know Where I am Going to be From': Culture, Context and Time in a Look Back at Racine v. Woods" in Kim Brooks, ed., Justice Bertha Wilson: One Woman's Difference (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009) pp. 173-189.
  • Gillian Calder and Sharon Cowan, (2008) 29 Australian Feminist Law Journal 109-130.
  • "'We the People of Constitutional Law 100 Y01': Pedagogical Promise of a Classroom Constitution in First-Year Law" (2008) 2 Canadian Legal Education Annual Review 39-60.
  • Elizabeth Adjin-Tettey, Gillian Calder, Angela Cameron, Maneesha Deckha, Rebecca Johnson, Hester Lessard, Maureen Maloney, Margot Young, (2008) 17(1)  Social and Legal Studies 5-38.
  • Natasha Bakht, Kim Brooks, Gillian Calder, Jennifer Koshan, Sonia Lawrence, Carissima Mathen, Debra Parkes, (2007) 45(4) Osgoode Hall Law Journal 667-732.
  • Gillian Calder and E. Llana Nakonechny, (2007) 23(2) Canadian Journal of Family Law 253
  • "The Personal is Economic: Unearthing the Rhetoric of Choice in the Canadian Maternity and Parental Leave Benefit Debates" in Sharon Cowan and Rosemary Hunter eds., Choice and Consent: Feminist Engagements with Law and Subjectivity (London: Cavendish Publishing Ltd., 2007) pp. 125-141.
  • (2006) 44(2) Alberta Law Review 465-475
  • (2006) 14(1) Feminist Legal Studies 99-118.
  • "Families and the Law in Canada: Cases and Commentary by Mary Jane Mossman" (Book Review) (2005) 22(1) Canadian Journal of Family Law 101-116.
  • "SCC to rule on parental leave" (2005) 25(19) The Lawyers Weekly 10, 16
  • (2003) 15(2) Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, pp. 342-366.
  • The Impact of Globalization on Social Programs in Canada: Gender, Social Reproduction, and Benefits for Maternity and Parental Leave (Ottawa: National Association of Women and the Law, 2003).
  • "Rethinking the Treatment of Federally Sentenced Women in a Substantive Equality Context." Paper submitted to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, February 5, 2003.
  • Gender, Social Reproduction and the Canadian Welfare State: Assessing the Recent Changes to the Maternity and Parental Leave Benefits Regime(2002) LL.M. thesis, York University.
  • "A Local Look at the Platform for Action : Beyond Beijing" (1996) 12(1) International Insights35-49.
  • "Human Rights of Women" in Take Action for Equality, Development and Peace: A Canadian Follow-up Guide to Beijing '95(Ottawa: C.R.I.A.W., 1996), collaborative chapter.
  • "Traffic: The Jam in the Fridge" (1974).
  • The Constitutional Law Process
  • The Legal Process
  • Family Law
  • Advance Family Law 
  • Queering Law
  • Civil Liberties and the Charter 

Prof. Calder welcomes applications from graduate students in the following research areas:

Polygamy: I have been working on an edited collection of essays responding to the question "What is Inherently Wrong with Polygamy." The collection flows from SSHRC and Law Foundation of BC funded research. My co-editor is Lori G. Beaman, and our text will be published by UBC Press in late 2013.

Children's Literature and Parenting in Law: I am presently working on a research project that explores the relationship between children's literature, oral story-telling, and legal understandings of the family, particularly foster parenting.

Empathy, Equality and Imagination: I have been very actively involved in the legal and social questions surrounding legal ethics and professionalism in Canada legal education. Since the summer of 2010, I have been writing and presenting on how questions of empathy, tolerance, equality and imagination are relevant to the development of the ethical professional.

Law's Regulation of the In-tact Family: Law in its various forms in formally and informally engaged in the construction of the normative family.  I have been working to investigate the impact of law on our understanding of the benefits, privileges and obligations that flow to certain kinds of families as a result.

Penguins: How is the ubiquity of the penguin in popular culture a question for law? Since 2009, I have been working on a series of research projects aimed to interrogate how popular culture is integral to our understanding of family and family forms. My primary project focused specifically on the movie, March of the Penguins.

Play-readings as Pedagogy: Since 2008, I have been using play-readings as a means for students to engage with some of law's most difficult questions, specifically anti-terrorism and same-sex marriage. I have also published on the work associated with this form of embodied legal pedagogy.

Theatre of the Oppressed in the Law School Classroom: Since 2007, I have been working with the student body to bring anti-oppression training into the legal curriculum at UVic Law. I have also worked with the Beyond Text project out of the University of Edinburgh to write about this work, and to connect it to other scholarly work that challenges how today's law student learns law.

Federalism, Equality and Autonomy: Since 2006, I have been working on projects, book reviews and presentations that look at the relationship between federalism and the Charter in constitutional litigation and advocacy.

Maternity and Parental Leave. Since 2003, I have been working on questions that engage the intersection of family law and constitutional law, particularly with attention to equality. What does the choice to deliver maternity and parental leave through Employment Insurance tells us about social reproduction in Canada?