Research

Statement of Interest:
As both a scholar and an activist, I am interested in bridging the divide between academia and community groups. Moreover, my work provides an empirical foundation for examining the impact of human rights policies, and a methodology for evaluating the success/failure of public policies. Currently, most of the research on human rights is dominated by legal scholars or is highly theoretical. Historians can offer a more concrete foundation for examining human rights policies, not only from a legal perspective, but also how legal norms are interpreted and applied by activists and others.

My research interests include the study of Canadian legal history, human rights, social movements, state power and gender.

My most recent work is a manuscript titled Canada's Rights Revolution: Human Rights Struggles of the Sixties and Seventies. It is an ambitious study of an entire social movement with a particular focus on the evolution of civil liberties and human rights associations in Canada since the 1930s. Some of the key issues raised in the book include the ideological divisions between civil liberties and human rights, the nature of social activism as shaped by the baby boom generation, the unique obstacles facing the formation of national social movement organizations in Canada, and the potential of NGOs to resist cooption when accepting state funding. A key theme throughout my work is the link between advocacy and public policy development. Among the human rights issues I examine in my current work are compulsory treatment of drug addicts, police brutality, censorship, denominational education, the October Crisis of 1970 and the rights of welfare recipients and prisoners.