Meet our Editors
Robson Crim is housed in Robson Hall, one of Canada's oldest law schools. Robson Crim has transformed into a Canada wide research hub in criminal law, with blog contributions from coast to coast, and from outside of this nation's borders. With over 30 academic peer collaborators at Canada's top law schools, Robson Crim is bringing leading criminal law research and writing to the reader. We also annually publish a special edition criminal law volume of the Manitoba Law Journal, providing a chance for authors to enter the peer reviewed fray. The Journal has ranked in the top 0.1 percent on Academia.edu and is widely used.
As part of our commitment to legal education outside of the ivory tower, this space will provide reflections on current issues in criminal law. We believe in open access principles, and these pages will be open and accessible to all. Welcome to Robson Crim and stay tuned for regular updates, stories and blawg posts.
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Dr. Richard Jochelson is a professor at the Faculty of Law at the University of Manitoba and holds his PhD in law from Osgoode Hall Law School at York University, a Masters in Law from University of Toronto Law School, and a Law Degree from University of Calgary Law School (Gold Medal). He is a former law clerk who served his articling year at the Alberta Court of Appeal and Court of Queen’s Bench, before working at one of Canada’s largest law firms. He worked for ten years teaching criminal and constitutional law at another Canadian university prior to joining Robson Hall.
He has published peer-reviewed articles dealing with obscenity, indecency, judicial activism, police powers, criminal justice pedagogy and curriculum development, empiricism in criminal law, and conceptions of judicial and jury reasoning. He is a member of the Bar of Manitoba and has co-authored and co-edited several books. He is a co-founder, architect and former editor of one of Canada's only national criminal justice journals. He has recently co-authored The Disappearance of Criminal Law: Police Powers and the Supreme Court (Fernwood, 2015) and Criminal Law and Precrime: Legal Studies in Canadian Punishment and Surveillance in Anticipation of Criminal Guilt (Routledge 2018).
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Dr. Amar Khoday earned his Doctor of Civil Law (2014) and Master of Laws (2008) degrees from McGill University’s Faculty of Law in Montreal and Juris Doctor (2004) from the New England School of Law in Boston. Working under the supervision of Dr. Frédéric Mégret, Dr. Khoday completed his doctoral thesis entitled “Legitimizing Resistance? International Refugee Law and the Protection of Individuals Resisting Oppression.” With respect to his doctoral studies, he was a recipient of both the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Doctoral Research Fellowship and O’Brien Fellowship for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism. In 2011, he was awarded a Doctoral Teaching Fellowship by the McGill Faculty of Law and taught criminal law during the summer session with Professor Angela Campbell.
Dr. Khoday also worked as a human rights researcher at McGill University’s Social Equity and Diversity Education Office. Prior to joining the faculty at Robson Hall in 2012, he completed a term as Executive Director of the McGill International Criminal Justice Clinic. Dr. Khoday maintains diverse research interests. Amongst these, and as part of his doctoral research, he examines the intersections between law and resistance and the ways that legal systems legitimize acts of resistance. His research also touches upon the areas of criminal law and procedure, refugee law, public international law, and law and popular culture.
Dr. James Gacek is an Associate Professor at the Department of Justice Studies at the University of Regina. With Professor Rose Ricciardelli, he recently completed a post-doctoral fellowship through the Department of Sociology, Memorial University of Newfoundland, where he engaged in a national longitudinal study with Correctional Services Canada. He recently completed his doctoral studies at Edinburgh Law School, University of Edinburgh, and his doctoral thesis focuses upon electronic monitoring in contemporary Scotland, a measure that is wholly provided by one private contractor (G4S Scotland). James’s work concerns the experience of delivering and receiving this form of supervision, and the texture of the new form of carcerality that it creates (Gacek, 2019; forthcoming; Sparks and Gacek, 2019; Gacek and Sparks, forthcoming). Arguably, this is precisely an example of Malcolm Feeley’s (1991, 2014) new techniques and modalities of punishment. So for James the question of what forms of penal subjectivity (and subjection) are brought into play through a contractual relationship between state authorities and private providers is a central one.
He has lectured in criminology and criminal justice at the University of Manitoba and the University of Winnipeg. He continues to publish in areas of incarceration, genocidal carcerality, critical issues in media, justice, and security studies, the exploitation of human-animal relations, and the broader politics of judicial reasoning. With Richard Jochelson, he has recently co-authored Criminal Law and Precrime: Legal Studies in Canadian Punishment and Surveillance in Anticipation of Criminal Guilt (2018, Routledge) as well as co-edited the forthcoming anthology Sexual Regulation and the Law: A Canadian Perspective (Demeter Press, 2019).
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Dr. Rebecca Jaremko Bromwich worked as a Program Director for the Graduate Diploma in Conflict Resolution program at Carleton, and has also taught courses relating to criminal law and the criminal justice system. Dr. Bromwich was also an Assistant Crown Attorney with the Ministry of the Attorney General in Ottawa. Rebecca received her Ph.D. in 2015 from the Carleton University Department of Law and Legal Studies, making history as the first ever graduate of that program. She is a member of the Alternative Dispute Resolution Institute of Ontario (ADRIO) and has a Certificate from the Program on Negotiation Master Class at Harvard University (2017). Rebecca also has an LL.M. and LL.B., received from Queen’s University in 2002 and 2001 respectively, and holds a Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies from the University of Cincinnati. Prior to taking on her current role as full time faculty at Carleton, Rebecca taught for several years at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law. Rebecca has also taught at the University of Western Ontario’s Faculty of Law, and at the University of Cincinnati in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. She writes columns for the Lawyers Weekly and has authored and co-authored several legal textbooks for students and legal system practitioners. She started at large, full-service firm, doing a wide range of litigation work, including criminal defense. She also worked for six years as Staff Lawyer, Law Reform and Equality, to the Canadian Bar Association, then as a Policy Counsel with the Federation of Law Societies of Canada.
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Dr. Kjell Anderson is a jurist and social scientist specialised in the study of human rights, mass violence, and mass atrocities. He is the author of Perpetrating Genocide: A Criminological Account (Routledge 2019),and the forthcoming volumes The Dilemma of Dominic Ongwen: From Child Abductee to War Criminal (Rutgers University Press, 2020); and Approaching Perpetrators: Insights on Ethics, Methods, and Theory (University of Wisconsin Press, 2020).
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He is a former vice president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars and is currently on the Board of Directors of the Sentinel Project for Genocide Prevention, as well as the Advisory Board of an AHRC funded project on “Compromised Identities? Reflections on Perpetration and Complicity under Nazism” at University College London. He holds PhD and LLM degrees in International Human Rights Law (from the National University of Ireland and Utrecht University, respectively), as well as MA and BA degrees in Conflict Studies (from Carleton University and the University of Saskatchewan).
Dr. Brandon Trask is an assistant professor of law at the University of Manitoba and an adjunct fellow at St. John’s College. He holds a JD from the University of Manitoba and an LLM from the University of Toronto, where he is completing his SJD. Professor Trask’s research focuses primarily on the areas of criminal law and evidence, constitutional law (with an emphasis on the Charter), and environmental law and policy, as well as areas related to progressive law and economics. Professor Trask previously worked as a Crown prosecutor in Nova Scotia (most recently with the Appeals and Special Prosecutions Section of the Nova Scotia Public Prosecution Service) and in Newfoundland and Labrador. He also previously taught through Memorial University of Newfoundland’s Law and Society Program.
Dr. Melanie Murchison in an Instructor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at the University of Manitoba and holds a PhD in Law from Queen's University Belfast, a MA in Legal Studies from Carleton University and a BA(Hons) from the University of Winnipeg in Criminal Justice. Prior to joining the U of M, she was a faculty member in the Center for Law, Society and Justice and the Sociology Department at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, teaching courses of her own design in addition to foundational courses, including Gender, Crime and Justice, Comparative Constitutional Law and Law and Popular Culture. Dr. Murchison has published several peer-reviewed articles on empiricism in law, judicial behaviour, police powers, jury nullification, and judicial activism. Her current research includes jury decision-making, judicial behaviour, rape myths, sexual assault law, and legal pedagogy.
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