Suzanne Bouclin

Biography

Professor Bouclin teaches broadly in the areas of social justice and conflict resolution.  Her innovative law, poverty and cinema class examines legal institutions and structures through the lexicon, theories and methods of film studies.  She holds a PhD from McGill University (Montreal), two interdisciplinary MAs and has been a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada since 2002.

Her research is situated at the crossroads of poverty law, film and media studies, and feminist theories.  Suzanne Bouclin is the first legal scholar to receive the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation’s Early Researcher Award  (2015-2020); she was also named the University of Ottawa’s Young Researcher of the Year (2015-2016); and was elected to the Global Young Academy (2016-2021). Her current projects include the following: examining whether new communications technologies can help homeless people access law and justice; a collaboration with Professors Jena McGill, Amy Salyzyn and Teresa Scassa regarding the privacy issues around the use of mobile and web-based apps; and a close exploration of the cinematic representations of criminalized women.  Professor Bouclin is also a member of University of Ottawa’s Centre for Law, Technology and Society.

Suzanne Bouclin is highly regarded for her work in furthering social justice for marginalized people. In 2016, she was appointed to the Ontario Human Right’s Tribunal. In 2014, she re-launched the Ticket Defence Program as a community-campus partnership in the form of a free mobile legal clinic providing legal services to homeless people in Ottawa.  She is also a member of the Observatory on Profiling, a bilingual, bi-juridical, and interdisciplinary hub for researchers documenting and observing profiling practices across Canada with the aim of contributing to public debate and policies around racial, social and political profiling. 

Her career trajectory from practice to academia includes articling for a boutique constitutional litigation firm in Toronto and working with national non-profit organizations in the following capacities: Director of the Language Rights Program for the Court Challenges Program of Canada; Executive Director of the National Associations Active in Criminal Justice (NAACJ); and Research/Analyst with the National Association of Women in the Law (NAWL). Her volunteer work and community activism was recognized by her peers in 2014 with the Faculty of Law’s Community Service Award. She has been a member of the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund's (LEAF) Legal Committee, as well as a board member of both the Canadian Law and Society Association (CLSA), and the Independent Film Collective of Ottawa.  She is also currently a board member for the Canadian Film Institute and sits on the Canadian Journal of Poverty Law's Editorial Committee. 

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Selected Publications

Articles

• “Marginalized Law Students and Mentorship” (2017), Ottawa Law Review 48:2 (forthcoming)
• (With Jena McGill and Amy Salyzyn) “Mobile and Web-Based Legal Apps: Opportunities, Risks and Information Gaps,” Canadian Journal of Law and Technology (forthcoming).
• “Faire basculer le climat de profilage social à Ottawa : le Programme de contestation des contraventions”, Profilage social et judiciarisation de la marginalité, 2016, volume 22, numéro 1, pp. 123-157.  Click here to access this article.
• “Identifying Pathways and Experiences of Street-Involvement Through Case Law”, Dalhousie Law Journal, 2015, volume 38, number 2, pp. 345-83.  Click here to access this article.
• “Regulated Out of Existence: A Case Study of Ottawa’s Ticket Defence Program”, Journal of Law and Equality, 2014, volume 11, pp. 35-83.
• « La cyberjustice comme réponse aux besoins juridiques des personnes itinérantes : son potentiel et ses embûches » (2013) 31:1 Recueil annuel d'accès à la justice de Windsor, 25-45 (with Marie-Andrée Denis-Boileau)
• "YouTube and Muslim Women’s Legal Subjectivities" (2013) Oñati Socio-Legal Series [online], Vol 3 (7), 1158-1183.
•  “Women’s Suffrage: A Cinematic Study”, Literature, History of Ideas, Images and Society, Special Issue: Equality Rights – Myth or Reality in Contemporary English-Speaking Societies, 2014, volume 12, number 7, online < http://lisa.revues.org/6918 >.  
•  “Une analyse de la règlementation des personnes itinérantes selon une perspective pothienne” (2013) Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 25(1), 1-30 (with J Pastora Sala).
• “The Insite Decision and the Case for Supervised Consumption Facilities in Ottawa” (2012) C.J. Poverty Law 91-120 1:1 (with Priyanka Vittal).
• "Regulating Sex Work in Canada” (2012) 3 Public Law 387.
• “Producing Film as Legal Knowledge” (2012) International Journal of the Humanities 9, online 7 pages.
• “Women in Prison’ Movies as Feminist Jurisprudence”(2009) Canadian Journal of Women and the Law / Revue femmes et droit 9 (21:1).
• “Dancers Empowering (Some) Dancers: The intersection of Race, Class and Gender in Organizing Marginal Workers” (2006) Race, Gender and Class 98 (13:3). 

Book Chapters

• "Roderick Macdonald’s Andragogy: Producing Fairness Through Education" in a D. Jutras, R. Jukier and R. Janda (eds.), The Unbounded Level of the Mind: Rod Macdonald’s Legal Imagination, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2015, pp. 33-40.
• "Méthodologies ambidextres en droit"; (Éditions Yvon Blais, 2013) Les cadres théoriques et le droit, sous la dir. Georges Azzaria, pp.347-350.
• “Producing Legal Subjectivities through Online Media” (2013) in A. Poletti & J. Rak (eds.) Identity Technologies: Producing Online Selves, University of Wisconsin Press. 
• “Punishment in Film” in W. Miller and J.G. Golson (eds.) The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America: An Encyclopedia (London & New York: Sage, 2012).
• “Playing Games with Law” in Z. Bankowski, M. Del Mar and P. Maharg (eds.) (2011) Beyond Text in Legal Education (with Gillian Calder & Sharon Cowan.
• “Female Judges” Encyclopedia of Women in Today’s World (Sage, 2011).
• “Feminism, Law, Film” in K. Brooks and C. Mathen (eds.) Women, Law, and Equality: A Discussion Guide (Irwin Law, 2010) pp.119-176.
• “Bad Girls Like Good Contracts: Erotic Dancers’ Resistance over Three Decades” in E. Faulkner and G. MacDonald (eds.) (Fernwood Press, 2009) Victim No More? Women Resisting the Label of Law pp.46-60.