Gillian Calder

Biography

Gillian Calder is a Professor and former Associate Dean. She has been teaching constitutional law, family law, and related seminars from feminist, queer and anti-colonialist perspectives since July 2004. Gillian's research is focused on questions of legal imagination, theories of constitutional law, law's impact on understandings of the family and family formation, performativity and storytelling. In particular, she is keenly interested in critical legal pedagogy and the role creativity, ethical imagination and empathy should play in a legal education. Her recent work has focused on law and emotion, where she weaves connections between teaching, embodiment and social location. 

Education

• BA (Hons.) History, UBC;
• LLB, UBC;
• Diploma in University Teaching, UNB;
• LLM, York University.

Selected books

• Gillian Calder and Lori G. Beaman, eds., Polygamy’s Rights and Wrongs: Perspectives on Harm, Family and Law (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2014).

Selected publications

• “‘The Winter We Danced’: Emotion, Embodiment and Indigenous Legal Orders in the Canadian Constitutional Law Classroom” in Mallika Kaur and Lindsay M. Harris, eds., How to Account for Trauma and Emotions in Law Teaching (Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., 2024) pp. 74-90.
• Gillian Calder and Rebecca Johnson, “Frames, Fiends, Feelings and Family: Succession’s Affect and the Law School Classroom” (2024) 73(3) DePaul Law Review 805-824. 
• “Legislating Emotion, Reading Grief: Bereavement Leave for Miscarriage and Stillbirth in New Zealand Law” (2022) 45(2) Dalhousie Law Journal 335-357. 
• “The ‘Granular and Quotidian, Dispersed and Tentacular’: Critical Reflections on CJLS. Special Issue 35(2) – On the Margins of Trans Legal Change” (2022). 11(1) feminists@law. 
• “‘Whose Body is This?’ On the role of emotion in teaching and learning law” Bandes, Madeira, Temple and Kidd White, eds, Research Handbook on Law and Emotion (London: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2021), pp. 62-79. 
• “Story-telling Motherhood with Katniss, Hermione, Tanya and the Warrior Cats, or Owls and Ravens Raising Wrens” in Karine Levasseur, Stephanie Paterson, and Lorna A. Turnbull, eds., Mothering and Welfare: Depriving, Surviving, Thriving (Bradford, On: Demeter Press, October 2020), pp. 259-273.
• “Performance, Pedagogy and Law: Theatre of the Oppressed in the Law School Classroom” in Zenon Bańkowski and Maksymilian Del Mar, eds., The Moral Imagination and the Legal Life: Beyond Text in Legal Education (London: Ashgate, 2013) pp. 215-254.
• “Penguins and Polyamory: Using Law and Film to Explore the Essence of Marriage in Canadian Family Law” (2009) 21(1) Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 55-89. 
• Elizabeth Adjin-Tettey, Gillian Calder, Angela Cameron, Maneesha Deckha, Rebecca Johnson, Hester Lessard, Maureen Maloney, Margot Young, “Postcards from the Edge (of Empire)” (2008) 17(1)  Social and Legal Studies 5-38. 
• Natasha Bakht, Kim Brooks, Gillian Calder, Jennifer Koshan, Sonia Lawrence, Carissima Mathen, Debra Parkes, “Counting Outsiders: A Critical Exploration of Outsider Course Enrolment in Canadian Legal Education” (2007) 45(4) Osgoode Hall Law Journal 667732.

Other Work

• Marlee Kline Lecture on Social Justice, “The Importance of Creativity, Empathy and Imagination to Legal Education in Canada.” February 27, 2025.

• “‘Man is the only real enemy we have’: Feminist Reflections on Staging Animal Farm in the Fall of 2024.” The Morrigan Blog, Doing Feminist Legal Work, March 19, 2025.

• “Harry Potter and She Who Will be Named: JK Rowling, Transphobia and Strategies of Resistance”: (November 25, 2024).

• Moira Aikenhead and Gillian Calder, “Competency-Based Education: Some Thoughts on Student Mental Health” in The Advocate, Vol. 81, Part 5 (September 2023) at pp. 731-737.

• Gillian Calder and Rebecca Johnson, “Metaphorical Hallways: Critical Pedagogies and the Canadian Network of Law and Humanities – or: What happens when you put a paper maché torso in the hallway or ask your colleagues to look under the dress?” (January 2023).

• “Everyone on UVic Campus Should be Vaccinated,” The Times Colonist, August 13, 2021. 

• Gillian Calder and Irehobhude O. Iyioha, “What #JusticeForJoyce Should Mean for Policy Makers” Policy Options Politique, November 3, 2020.

• Kathryn Chan and Gillian Calder, “Law School Ruling Affects All of Us,” The Times Colonist, June 17, 2018. 

• Gillian Calder and Susan B. Boyd, “Comment: Connecting the dots in family violence cases” The Times Colonist, January 3, 2018. 

• “Assisted dying ruling is wise and compassionate,” The Times Colonist, February 7, 2015. 

Courses

• Law 100: The Constitutional Law Process
• Law 106: The Legal Process
• Law 110: Legal Research and Writing
• Law 322: Family Law
• Law 343: Contemporary Issues in Law 
• Law 357: Queering Law
• Law 359: Civil Liberties and the Charter - LAW 359

Graduate supervision

Professor Calder is interested in supervising graduate students working on questions of legal imagination, theories of constitutional law, law's impact on our understanding of the family and family formation, storytelling, performativity, critical legal and arts-based pedagogies, and legal education. And in particular, she welcomes graduate students pursuing these questions through feminist, anti-colonial and queer legal perspectives.