Meet two uOttawa graduate students in Law who are now on the front lines of social justice
The Skype connection with Siobhán Airey at the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam is so crisp it’s hard to believe there are 5,700 kilometres separating us. What is coming across loud and clear from this uOttawa Faculty of Law PhD student is her fierce passion for the research she is conducting into the role for law in the governance of the new international public-private financing arrangements associated with the United Nation’s sustainable development goals. Airey, a native Irishwoman and now a Canadian dual citizen, is in the Netherlands capital on a prestigious Marie Curie postdoctoral Fellowship to find better ways of ensuring that international aid funds — Canada’s included — deliver real impact to people in poverty in other countries. She said the work appeals to her strong natural sense of community and social justice, values ingrained in her while growing up in rural County Limerick. “It’s about leaving no one behind,” she said. “In Ireland we have this word ‘meitheal’ to describe people coming together to help one another — it’s a kind of web of life approach that acknowledges that we all depend on each other.” Airey was delighted when uOttawa’s law faculty took her on as a PhD candidate. After several graduate degrees she was pursuing doctoral research a bit later than many applicants, and feared her situation might be too “atypical” to be accepted. “I feel so fortunate that my supervisor, Dr. Penelope Simons, took a chance on me,” Airey said. “I have nothing but praise for her, and for Professor Heather McLeod-Kilmurray. They were incredibly supportive in encouraging doctoral researchers from diverse backgrounds to push ourselves in terms of our own knowledge.” In fact, Airey was exactly the type of socially motivated applicant the Faculty of Law wants to support. Sochetra Nget, the assistant dean of the Faculty of Law’s Graduate Studies Office, said that each case has its own merits. “Every candidate is unique,” Nget said. “They might not all meet particular criteria, but when we see potential, we try to make it work by offering candidates personalized guidance that takes into account their background and life experience.” With a fully engaged support staff ready to help students navigate the complexities of university life, and with 100 full-time professors of common and civil law available to share their expertise and viewpoints with the 186 graduate students currently registered, Nget said the faculty environment is geared for success. The faculty even has its own on-campus legal clinics and a fully functional courtroom where students can listen to real cases being heard. Having the Supreme Court of Canada, federal government departments and certain NGO offices nearby also provides unique access to a variety of law-related internship and practicum opportunities. Competition for student scholarships can be fierce, but Airey’s success with her Marie Curie Fellowship is indicative of the level of support students can expect in preparing their grant proposals. Toronto resident Pierre Cloutier de Repentigny, a doctoral student and part-time professor in uOttawa’s Faculty of Law, picked up major funding himself in 2017 as one of two uOttawa graduate students that year to receive a coveted Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholarship. He says this was in great part thanks to the preparatory assistance provided by Sophie Thériault from the faculty’s Civil Law section. He also received a Bombardier Doctoral Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council — not too bad for someone who says that Law was actually his second choice coming out of CEGEP. He now holds civil law and common law degrees from uOttawa, whose National Program allows civilian-trained lawyers to complete their JD degree in common law in a year. He completed a Master of Laws degree through the University of British Columbia. Cloutier de Repentigny’s doctoral thesis, supervised by McLeod-Kilmurray, analyzes the marine life protection provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. He maintains that the way laws are constructed around a market economy approach makes them fundamentally incompatible with environmental protection. The Trudeau Foundation scholarship, he said, gives him the freedom to not only conduct his thesis research, but to contribute to other causes for social justice, primarily relating to LGBTQ minority rights. “The uOttawa Faculty of Law was a very good fit for my PhD,” he said. “I knew I would feel at home working with other people who think about social goals that are larger than any specific thing or themselves.” For more information on graduate and postdoctoral studies at uOttawa, visit www. uottawa.ca/graduate-studies.