Oonagh FITZGERALD
An Artistic and Performative Decoding and Encoding of International Law for the Posthuman Cyborg Anthropocene
Oonagh’s dissertation describes the development of her transdisciplinary international law-arts research-creation (TILARC) practice for decoding and encoding international law through art and performance. This practice is based on a critique of the body of international law that developed from the 1945 Charter of the United Nations. It uses art and performance to imagine renewing this planetary charter to address the environmental, technological, humanitarian and human rights crises of our times. This is not a law reform project, but an imaginative and creative project aimed at engaging a broader audience in thinking and making art and performance about international law relevant to contemporary crises.
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Roojin HABIBI
Informal concensus-building as an emerging praxis in international human rights law
Roojin’s dissertation examines the practice of informal consensus-building in international law. It defines this practice as a collaborative process through which scholars, advocates, and practitioners, working outside formal institutional mandates, develop shared understandings of legal norms. Her thesis contextualized and chronicled the ground-breaking consensus process that she led to develop human rights principles for public health emergencies.
Thesis supervisor: Steven Hoffman (Professor, Dahdaleh Distinguished Chair and Director, Global Strategy Lab, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University)
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Jocelyn KANE
Refusing State Injustice: The Politics of Intentional Noncitizenship
Jocelyn’s thesis examines individuals who intentionally reject citizenship and accept risks such as statelessness, analyzing their justifications and the implications of this choice through three cases: the Freedom Babies movement, anti-statists, and the anti-authority movement. It argues that intentional noncitizenship can be a viable alternative to citizenship, proposing a governance mechanism based on self-determination and challenging the notion that statelessness is inherently harmful.
Thesis supervisor: Patti Tamara Lenard (Full Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ottawa)
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Justine MONETTE-TREMBLAY
Les commissions de vérité et de réconciliation répondent-elles au besoin de justice des victimes? Pistes de réflexion pour une forme de justice plus adaptée aux victimes (Do Truth and Reconciliation Commissions meet victims' need for justice? Ideas for a form of justice more suited to victims)
Justine's doctoral research focuses on the generally accepted but rarely questioned correlation that Truth and Reconciliation Cpmmissions (TRCs) necessarily have positive effects on victims, since they are supposed to embody a form of restorative justice. She sought to answer the following questions: Do TRCs contribute to victims' sense of justice? Could we improve this sense of justice? To answer these questions, she drew on Jason Colquitt's (2001) theory on the formation of victims' perceptions in the different dimensions of justice: procedural, distributive, and interactional. She then applied this analytical framework to a multiple case study, examining the cases of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa and the Dialogue, Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Côte d'Ivoire.
This enabled Justine to identify the factors that positively or negatively influence victims' perceptions in each of the dimensions of justice. By comparing these two cases, she proposed “contextual interpretations” that shed light on the general theory of TRCs concerning victims. Based on this insight, she then made recommendations in each dimension of justice for future TRCs, aimed at maximizing positive perceptions of victims and reducing negative ones.
Thesis supervisor: Julie Paquin (Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, Civil Law Section, University of Ottawa)