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Two Doctoral Candidates Awarded Prestigious Vanier Scholarships at the Faculty of Law

Published: 23 June 2020

The Faculty of Law is proud to announce that the Government of Canada has named DCL candidates Maria Adelaida Ceballos-Bedoya and Ermanno Napolitano as 2020 Vanier Scholars.

Launched in 2008, the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship is one of Canada’s most prestigious awards for doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows. Valued at $50,000 per year for three years of study and research, the awards recognize individuals who demonstrate exceptional leadership skills and scholarly achievement in the social sciences and humanities, natural sciences and engineering, or health-related disciplines.

Maria Adelaida Ceballos-Bedoya is an O’Brien Fellow at the Faculty of Law. She is a Colombian lawyer with a master’s degree in sociology from the National University of Colombia. Her doctoral work, supervised by Professor Shauna Van Praagh, examines gender inequalities in the Colombian judicial system. More specifically, she is studying the factors that facilitate or hinder the entry of women to different levels of the judiciary in the context of state weakness, as found in Colombia.

Ermanno Napolitano’s doctoral thesis, which he is completing under the supervision of Professor Richard Janda, is tentatively entitled Geoengineering: Establishing the Legal Conditions for its Legitimate Deployment. The thesis deepens the legal understanding of geoengineering, intended as the deliberate large-scale manipulation of the earth’s atmosphere in order to reduce global warming, and of the potential consequences of its deployment. Napolitano received an LLM from the Faculty’s Institute of Air and Space Law in 2019.

“We are delighted to see two of our doctoral candidates receive prestigious Vanier scholarships in support of their path-breaking research,” said Dean Robert Leckey. “I am consistently impressed by the caliber of candidates and research emerging from our vibrant graduate studies community."

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