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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, “” (2024) 73(3) DePaul Law Review 805-824. 
• “” (2022) 45(2) Dalhousie Law Journal 335-357. 
• “” (2022). 11(1) feminists@law. 
• “‘” Bandes, Madeira, Temple and Kidd White, eds, Research Handbook on Law and Emotion (London: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2021), pp. 62-79. 
•  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.
• “” (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, “” (2008) 17(1)  Social and Legal Studies 5-38. 
• Natasha Bakht, Kim Brooks, Gillian Calder, Jennifer Koshan, Sonia Lawrence, Carissima Mathen, Debra Parkes, “” (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.

•  The Morrigan Blog, Doing Feminist Legal Work, March 19, 2025.

• “”: (November 25, 2024).

• Moira Aikenhead and Gillian Calder, “” in The Advocate, Vol. 81, Part 5 (September 2023) at pp. 731-737.

• Gillian Calder and Rebecca Johnson, “” (January 2023).

• “,” The Times Colonist, August 13, 2021. 

• Gillian Calder and Irehobhude O. Iyioha, “” Policy Options Politique, November 3, 2020.

• Kathryn Chan and Gillian Calder, “,” The Times Colonist, June 17, 2018. 

• Gillian Calder and Susan B. Boyd, “” The Times Colonist, January 3, 2018. 

• “,” The Times Colonist, February 7, 2015. 

Courses

• : The Constitutional Law Process
• : The Legal Process
• Law 110: Legal Research and Writing
• : Family Law
• : Contemporary Issues in Law 
• : Queering Law
• : 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.