Changing the Rules - Annie Macdonald Langstaff Workshop with Esmeralda Thornhill
Join us for an Annie Macdonald Langstaff Workshop with Professor Esmeralda Thornhill, in conversation with DCL candidates Ruey-Yun Hung and Vanessa MacDonnell. This year's theme for the Annie Macdonald Langstaff Workshops series is “Mothers-in-law”: Intergenerational Dialogues on Women and Human Rights.
About the speaker
Professor Esmeralda Thornhill is a lawyer, linguist and pedagogue by training, a lecturer, researcher, anti-racism trainer and writer by experience, and a long-time social justice advocate and community organizer by conviction. Research Associate since 2014 with Concordia’s Simone de Beauvoir Institute, she formally retired in 2016 from Dalhousie’s Schulich Law School where, when appointed the first scholar to anchor the unprecedented James Robinson Johnston Endowed Chair in Black Canadian Studies (1996-2002), she became the first African Canadian woman to hold a Tenured Full Professorship of Law in Canada. Seasoned Human Rights scholar-practitioner and founding member of the Congress of Black Women of Canada, she pioneered the first university-accredited course on Black Women’s Studies offered in Canada (Concordia, 1983). In 2012 McGill’s Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism invited this former Fulbright Fellow to become its first O’Brien Fellow in Residence. Grounded in Critical Race Theory, her teaching, research and scholarship reflect an Afrocentric, anti-racist stance that resolutely addresses the “material reality” which Black people must navigate, nationally and globally. Besides degrees in languages and pedagogy (McGill), law degrees (UQAM, San Diego), post-graduate studies in Spain, England and France, and international human rights law internships (UNESCO, Paris; Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Washington, D.C.), she holds Honorary Doctorates from CUNY and Concordia.
About the Annie MacDonald Langstaff Workshops
Inaugurated in 1988 in honour of Annie MacDonald Langstaff, BCL '14, the first woman to earn a law degree in Quebec, the workshops provide a forum for academics, judges, lawyers, and community activists to present scholarly research and practical insights on issues relating to women and the law.
This year, the series is moderated by Professor Shauna Van Praagh, in collaboration with the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism.