Researchers

Meyer Aaron is currently the CEO, 3Pi Capital Advisory Inc. which is developing market-based models for sustainable finance initiatives. Prior to this, Meyer was a Policy Adviser at the bank of Canada.

As Policy Adviser in the Funds Management and Banking Department at the Bank of Canada, Meyer contributed to the Bank’s work on emerging financial technologies. Meyer’s other roles while at the Bank of Canada included Adviser, Policy and Markets, in the Financial Markets Department, where he led a review of the Bank’s framework for financial market operations, as well as the development and implementation of the margining policy for the Government of Canada’s USD60B cross currency swaps portfolio used for its foreign reserves.

Meyer represented the Bank on the Trading Book Group, a Basel committee which conducted a fundamental review of regulatory capital for banks’ trading books.

Meyer was a member of the Bank’s Pension Fund Investment Committee. Meyer’s career at the Bank has included managing the Bank’s pension fund. He was awarded the Terry Staples Award in 2012 for his contributions by the Pension Investment Association of Canada. Meyer also contributed to the Bank’s work on financial system function, developing market-based models for domestic and international financial system assessment.

Prior to joining the Bank, Meyer worked as partner in a venture capital firm, and as partner in a law firm specializing in international banking and corporate financing. Meyer holds a BSc, MSc, MA (Economics), JD, MBA, and a CFA designation. He has contributed to the Bank’s publications and to leading scientific journals.

Deborah Curran is an Associate Professor at the University of Victoria in the Faculty of Law and School of Environmental Studies (Faculty of Social Sciences), and the Executive Director of the Environmental Law Centre. Deborah’s work is in the areas of land and water law, with a particular focus on environmental protection and collaborative management in water law, healthy foodscapes, and how Indigenous law is shaping colonial law. Deborah also teaches a national field course in Environmental Law and Sustainability from the Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre with the support of the Huu-ay-aht First Nation, and is establishing relationships in Bhutan and Thailand in support of experiential learning.

Donna Greschner served as UVic Law Dean from 2008 to 2013. Her research and scholarship have focused on constitutional law (especially equality rights) and, more recently, health-care law. Her writings are frequently cited by Canadian courts.

As a law professor at the University of Saskatchewan from 1982-2003, she taught its first seminars in feminist legal theory and helped create the Women's Studies Research Unit in 1984. Greschner has been a visiting professor at the University of Toronto, McGill University and Griffith University (Australia), and has taught comparative constitutional law in southern California. She received the University of Saskatchewan's Master Teacher Award in 2002 for teaching excellence.

From 1992-96, she served as Chief Commissioner of the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission. As a member of the Saskatchewan and California Bars, Greschner has advised many governments, First Nations and non-profit organizations on constitutional questions, and she was a member of the Government of Saskatchewan's negotiating team for the Charlottetown Accord in 1992.

Amongst other work, she was a consultant to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1990-91) and the Royal Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada (2003). Her international work includes advising the African National Congress on constitutional issues in 1991, and consulting on anti-discrimination policies for the Commission on Labor Co-operation in 2004-2005.

Professor Greschner's UVic Law profile page

Simi Kang is a Sikh American community advocate, educator, artist, and scholar. Her/Their work centers Asian American collaborative resistance as a site for imagining environmentally and economically just futures in Southeast Louisiana. In collaboration with Vietnamese and Cambodian American commercial fisherfolk, her community engagement and writing practices reject the imperative for structurally underserved communities to be resilient to extraction, environmental racism, and the violence of the US immigration system. It also, importantly, underscores the power of mutual aid and collaborative, multi-generational resistance. She holds a Ph.D. in Feminist Studies from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and has a scholastic background in Asian American studies, environmental injustice, cultural anthropology, and creative writing.

Dr. Carol Liao is an Associate Professor at the Peter A. Allard School of Law and the UBC Sauder Distinguished Scholar of the Dhillon Centre for Business Ethics at the UBC Sauder School of Business. Her research focuses on business law, corporate governance, corporate sustainability, and business ethics. She is the Principal Investigator of a SSHRC Insight Grant-funded project studying the evolution of international corporate law and governance principles from an economic, social, and environmental sustainability lens. She is a Principal co-Investigator of the Canada Climate Law Initiative, a cross-disciplinary research hub advancing knowledge on fiduciary obligation and climate governance. Asia's interconnectedness with the world, growing influence on international norms, and leading drivers of climate change has also necessitated her research towards sustainable governance in Asia. She is the Director of the Centre for Business Law, a national research centre that hosts and co-hosts numerous events throughout the year on contemporary issues in business law.

Dr. Liao is currently editing three books on sustainable business, including Innovating Business for Sustainability: Regulatory Approaches in the Anthropocene (Edward Elgar), Corporate Social Responsibility and the Law from the Next Generation of Lawyers (McGill-Queen’s), and Contemporary Theories in Corporate Law and Corporate Governance. Before joining UBC, Dr. Liao was a faculty member at the University of Victoria Faculty of Law, where she received the 2016 Law Students’ Society First Year Class Teaching Award.

Prior to academia, Dr. Liao was a senior associate in the New York Mergers & Acquisitions Group of Shearman & Sterling LLP, where she represented public and private multinational corporations in a variety of transactional and governance matters. On behalf of the firm, she also served as a legal researcher for the Office of the Prosecutor on location at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda, and was featured in the New York Law Journal for her pro bono asylum work. She is a former judicial clerk of the BC Court of Appeal.

Isabel Lloyd is a highly experienced former Deputy Minister in British Columbia and is currently working with the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) on governance, legal reform and CEDAW implementation programmes in seven countries in Southeast Asia and Bangladesh. From 1996-2002, she was Director of a CIDA Regional Governance Fund in Southeast Asia, with a diverse portfolio of expertise in implementing capacity development initiatives and government programs, many of which have focused on legal reform, human rights, gender and good governance.

In 1988-90 she took leave from the BC Government to manage the implementation of the Canada-Thai Women's Economic and Leadership Development Program. In 1992 she moved back to Southeast Asia where she has since managed two major assignments and undertaken a number of short-term governance projects for CIDA. Between 1992-94 she served as the Senior Social Development Advisor to CIDA for Thailand. Her responsibilities included serving as the Gender, Human Rights, Social Policy and Technical Advisor for all CIDA programs in Thailand. In 1992 at the time of the May disturbances in Thailand she wrote the first report of its kind for CIDA on the impact of CIDA programs on the human rights and governance situation in Thailand. From 1994-96 (working as an independent consultant) in addition to the work in Thailand she worked directly with CIDA and with Canadian Executing Agencies on a number of activities: evaluation of gender dimensions of a multi year Canada-Cambodia project run by a consortium of Canadian NGOs; Social Policy/Gender Advisor to the CIDA Vietnam Program; Advisor to the Ministry for the Role of Women in Indonesia; Advisor to the Permanent Secretary in the Office of the Thai Prime Minister and the staff of the National Commission on Women's Affairs, Thailand. In 1994 Isabel Lloyd was the first foreigner to be given the International Women's Day Award by the Prime Minister of Thailand for "outstanding contributions to the Development of Women in Thailand".

From April 1996 until September 2002, as Director of the CIDA Southeast Asia Fund for Institutional and Legal Development (SEAFILD) Isabel Loyd was responsible for all aspects of the field management of this C$8.9m project from initial inception and implementation to closure. 150 sub-projects covered activities on legal reform, development of human rights institutions, legal issues related to trafficking of women and children, child sexual abuse, migrant workers rights, media and journalist training.

Isabel Lloyd has demonstrated expertise in: conducting institutional reviews of government departments, community-related agencies, health departments as well as gender strategy development, stakeholder facilitation, training programs and evaluations.

Her personal strengths are demonstrated by her proven track record as a problem solver, negotiator, administrator, manager, innovator, leader and communicator. Earlier in her career, she actively worked to promote gender equality and was at the forefront of the fight to establish home based services for the disabled, elderly, and children. Isabel Lloyd entered the Public Service of British Columbia in 1973 and was a Deputy Minister from 1982 to 1992. She brings an extensive range of executive government experience and administrative skill to her work, having served in five ministries as Deputy Minister of Labour (Employment and Women's Programs), Advanced Education and Training, Tourism and Government Services. During her career in the Government of B.C., she was responsible for the introduction of new and innovative government programs, most notably the Province's Long Term Care and Home Care Programs. In 1991 she was awarded the Lieutenant-Governor's Medal for her distinguished contribution to public service.

Ted McDorman joined the Faculty of Law in 1985 and was promoted to professor in 2001. His teaching areas include public international law, international trade law, international ocean and environmental law, and private international law (conflicts of law).

He taught Canadian constitutional law for many years and also taught Canadian environmental law and comparative Asian law. He has been a visiting professor at institutions in Thailand, Sweden, the Netherlands and Canada and has over 100 publications in the areas of ocean law and policy, international trade law and comparative constitutional law. Since 2000, He has been the editor-in-chief of Ocean Development and International Law: The Journal of Marine Affairs.

Sada Niang obtained his B.A. Honours and his M.A. from the Université of Paris X, Nanterre and a PhD from York University in Toronto. He has been teaching at the University of Victoria since 1991.

In addition to his book, Djibril Diop Mambéty, un cinéaste à contre courant (L'Harmattan, 2002), he ahs published articles and reviews in Research in African Literatures, The Dalhousie Review, Etudes Francophones, Presence Francophone, Notre Librairie, and book chapters in numerous critical collections. He is most recently the principal investigator of a major research grant on the Aesthetics of African cinemas, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

His teaching interests include African literatures, Caribbean literatures, African cinemas, Caribbean cinemas and French phonetics. He is currently at work on several projects, in various stages of completion. They involve the relationship between African and world cinemas, the artistic legacy of Ousmane Sembene and Diaspora literature in France.

Pooja Parmar joined the Faculty of Law in 2015. She received a PhD in Law from UBC, and has previously taught at Carleton University, Osgoode Hall Law School, and UBC Faculty of Law. Prior to commencing graduate research, she practiced law in New Delhi for several years.

Professor Parmar’s current research focuses on the legal profession in Canada and India, indigeneity, and human rights. Her research is informed by her interest in questions of legal epistemology and plurality. She is currently working on four research projects. The first is a study of lawyers who represent Indigenous peoples. The second is a legal history project (in collaboration with John McLaren) about lawyers who represented unpopular causes in BC in the early twentieth century. A third study focuses on the legal profession in India and examines the relationship between legal training and access to justice for Indigenous peoples in the country. Her fourth project focuses on international law and Indigenous peoples. Her published research has examined aspects of human rights, right to water, claims of indigeneity, oral history, translation across legal worlds, intersections of law and colonialism, and law and development. Her latest publication is a book titled Indigeneity and Legal Pluralism in India: Claims, Histories, Meanings published by Cambridge University Press in 2015.

Professor Parmar teaches courses in legal ethics and professionalism, property law, and international human rights law. She has previously taught a range of courses including Public International Law, Law & Development, International Economic Law, Human Rights & Social Justice, and Contracts. She is currently supervising graduate research on law and colonialism, Indigenous rights, environmental & social justice, and legal history.

Professor Parmar is a member of the board of directors of the Canadian Association for Legal Ethics (CALE). She is also a founding member of the Global South Asia Forum at UVic.

M. Cody Poulton is Professor of Japanese literature and theatre in the Department of Pacific and Asian Studies at the University of Victoria, Canada, where he has taught since 1988. Active as a translator of Japanese fiction and drama, he is author of Spirits of Another Sort: The Plays of Izumi Kyōka (2001) and A Beggar' Art: Scripting Modernity in Japan, 1900-1930 (2010). He is also co-editor, with Mitsuya Mori and J. Thomas Rimer, of The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Drama (2014) and a contributing editor to The Cambridge History of Japanese Theatre (2016).

In fall 2018, Cody organized a four-day CAPI conference called "The Nonhuman in Japanese Culture and Society: Spirits, Animals, Technology," featuring a line-up of leading international scholars and artists whose areas of exploration cover a wide array of "nonhuman" issues in Japanese society, from animal studies and new materialism to augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and performance and puppetry. He continues to bring Japanese-focused programming to CAPI.

Reeta Chowdhari Tremblay is Professor of Comparative Politics and Global South in the department of Political Science at the University of Victoria. Her major areas of research are identity-based politics and secessionist movements (Kashmir) in South Asia, the politics of subaltern resistance and accommodation in post-colonial societies, democracy and governance, and comparative federalism. During her career, she has held several administrative positions including Vice President Academic and Provost at the University of Victoria; Vice President (Academic) and Pro Vice-Chancellor (Pro Tem) at Memorial University in Newfoundland ; Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Memorial; and, Chair, department of Political Science at Concordia University, Montreal.

Reeta Tremblay is Past President of the Canadian Political Science Association (CPSA), Canadian Asian Studies (CASA), and the Canadian Council of Area Studies of Learned Societies (including Canadian Asian Studies, Latin American Studies, African Studies and the Middle Eastern Studies). She has also served or is serving on editorial boards of several disciplinary journals including PS Political Science (APSA), Pacific Affairs, Canadian Journal of Law and Society, Politics and Governance.

Reeta Tremblay presently holds the Honorary Research Associate position at the Centre for India and South Asia Research at UBC. She is also associated with the Centre d’études et de recherche sur l’Inde, l’Asie du Sud et sa diaspora (CERIAS) at l’Université du Québec à Montréal. As well, she is a CAPI Associate at the Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives and a founding member of Global South Asia Forum at the University of Victoria, and a non-resident fellow at the Society for Policy Studies (SPS), New Delhi. In 2016 and 2017 summer terms, she was a Visiting Scholar at SOAS, University of London. In 2015, she was a Visiting Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies at Wassenaar. 

Reeta Tremblay holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago. She also has an MPhil degree from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, India and an MA and BA from the University of Kashmir.  She has authored or co-authored six books and several articles and reviews. Her work is widely reviewed and cited—in particular her writings on Kashmir and India-Pakistan relations, a subject on which she is widely considered to be the leading North American expert. Her SSHRC funded research includes projects on comparative federalism in the South Asian region where she explores the relationship between territorial and cultural identities and examines the tensions and contradictions between formal and informal nationalisms; between subaltern resistance and accommodation in conflict zones. She has been recognized for her exceptional teaching at both the graduate and undergraduate levels and has received the Concordia University Alumni Association Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2002.

Reeta Tremblay's selected recent publications include: “Modi’s Foreign Policy” (2017); “Contested Governance, Competing Nationalisms, and Disenchanted Publics: Kashmir beyond Intractability?” (2017)   "Kashmir’s Contentious Politics: The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same” (2015); “Beyond Parochialism and Domestic Preoccupation: The Current State of Comparative Politics in Canada" (2013) and "Labor Migration, Citizenship, and Social Welfare in China and India" (2013).

She also contributes commentaries on South Asia, in particular on Kashmir and on South Asian regional politics to South Asia Monitor (projects of the New Delhi-based think tank, Society for Policy Studies) and to KashmirConnected. In 2015, she was recognized as one of the top 40 prominent Indo-Canadians and was profiled in The Indian Diaspora’ A-List.

Vandanet Hing is a researcher and lecturer at the Center for the Study of Humanitarian Law at the Royal University of Law and Economics in Cambodia whose time at CAPI included conducting research on "the development of international criminal law: assessing Extraordinary Chamber in the Court of Cambodia (ECCC) precedents" as part of the CAPI/University of Victoria Faculty of Law project "Regulating Globalization in South and Southeast Asia."

Tiasa's dissertation deals with the Christianisation of the Saoras of Ganjam district (Orissa, India): Contributions of the Canadian Baptist Mission 1870-1970. The main focus of this project is to trace the history of conversion movement among the tribal group (First Nation people, a term used by the Candian missionaries) 'Saoras' who reside in the frontier zones of the Ganjam district. With the advent of the Canadian Baptist missionaries like John Glendinning, Dr West, Amos Sutton and others in the region, Christianity takes a ground in the heathen land, bringing a new life to these people. This research will also try to show the various methods used by the missionaries to evangelise, the response of the Saoras and their neighbouring communities like the Panos, Paidis and Bissoyis, and most importantly, the conflicts and contradictions among the non-converts and mainly the Hindu Mahasabha who try to push away the missionaries from India, socially ostracize the Christian converts fearing a growing majority of the Christian community.

Ramesh Bairy's research focuses on structure of contemporary caste, inequalities, the region of Karnataka (south India), and the unfolding forms of Hindu-ness. During his visit, Ramesh focused his efforts on a) compiling a descriptive account of the life of the Hindu monastic institution - the 'matha' - in the state of Karnataka (south India) since the late 19th Century in order to get at why it emerges as a central mediator in enabling access to modern resources for its community of adherents; b) working on an analysis of caste and its stabilities written by BR Ambedkar to ask whether his questions (offered as they were in the 1930s) must remain ours too. He is author of Being Brahmin, Being Modern: Exploring the Lives of Caste Today.

Sushmita is currently teaching at the School of Policy and Governance, Azim Premji University, Bangalore as Assistant Professor. She finished her doctoral degree from Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her work falls in the larger domain of urban politics but she draws from methods and debates across disciplines like anthropology, political economy, history and law. At CAPI she worked on her book manuscript which looks at the processes and politics of villages getting drawn into the urban fold in the context of Delhi since 1950s to contemporary times.