Freya Kodar appointed Dean of Law

Associate Professor Freya Kodar has been appointed Dean of Law for a five-year term beginning July 1, 2023.

Freya is a proud graduate of the faculty’s co-op program (Class of ’95) where she shared the William R. McIntyre Award for academic excellence, community service and student leadership. She returned to UVic Law as a faculty member in 2005, after time in practice, primarily in the area of poverty law, and after completing her graduate work at York University. She served as Associate Dean, Administration and Research from 2016 to 2021, playing a critical leadership role in implementing the JD/JID program and responding to the pandemic, two of the most important events in the history of UVic Law. She has an exemplary record of teaching and research, implementing equity, diversity, inclusion and reconciliation initiatives, and supporting faculty, staff and student success.

Her research focuses on questions of income and financial inequality across the life course, work that is published in a range of scholarly media, and that she has undertaken with attention to marginalization, particularly the construction of gender and family relations. She researches and teaches in the areas of consumer law, pensions, torts and disability and the law, bringing a feminist perspective to the classroom and her scholarship. Most recently, she has been one of the co-authors of Law and Disability in Canada: Cases and Materials, the first Canadian textbook on Law and Disability.

During Freya’s term as Dean of Law her priorities include leading the faculty through strategic planning and curriculum reform processes, and the completion of the expansion to the Fraser Building that will house 1) the National Centre for Indigenous Laws, 2) classrooms and spaces that are appropriate for teaching and learning Indigenous laws, and 3) purpose-built space for the faculty’s clinical programs and research centres. She looks forward to marking the faculty’s 50^th anniversary in 2025 in this transformative space, and to celebrating the faculty’s contributions and those of its alumni to the province, the country and internationally.