Maneesha Deckha
Professor, Lansdowne Chair in Law
Professor Deckha joined the Faculty of Law as an Assistant Professor in 2002 after practising at the Ministry of the Attorney General in Toronto and attending Columbia University, where she completed an LLM thesis on gender and cultural equality in criminal law. In addition to her appointmentat the University of Victoria, she has held the Fulbright Visiting Chair in Law and Society at New York University, has been appointed as a Scholar-in-Residence at Seattle University School of Law, and has worked as a Visiting Scholar at the Hastings Institute for Bioethics.
Professor Deckha's research interests include health law and bioethics, critical animal studies and animal law, feminist analysis of law, law and culture and law society. Her work has been published in Canada and internationally in legal and interdisciplinary venues including the McGill Law Journal, Osgoode Hall Law Journal, Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, Medical Law Review, Harvard Journal of Gender and Law, Hastings Women's Law Journal, UCLA Women's Law Journal, Animal Law Review, Journal of Animal Law and Ethics, Stanford Journal of Animal Law and Policy, and Unbound: The Harvard Journal of the Legal Left. Outside of law reviews, she has been published in Hypatia, Sexualities, and Ethics & the Environment, among other publications. She has also contributed to several anthologies relating to feminism, cultural pluralism, and health law and policy.
Professor Deckha is the recipient of grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and the Canada-US Fulbright Program. She has delivered over sixty papers in Canada and abroad and has served as referee for leading law reviews and socio-legal and feminist journals in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom.
Professor Deckha has taught courses on: Animals, Culture and the Law; Bioethics, Personhood and the Law; Feminist Legal Theories; Health Law, Administrative Law; Property; and Legal Process. She has been the recipient of the Faculty's Terry J. Wuester Teaching Award and a University of Victoria Learning and Teaching Centre Grant in support of her interactive pedagogy. In 2006, Professor Deckha's seminar on Animals, Culture and the Law received the U.S. Humane Society's Animal and Society New Course Award. She supervises graduate students in the fields of health law, bioethics, feminist theories and animal law.
Professor Deckha was promoted to Associate Professor in 2008. She held the Fulbright Visiting Chair in Law and Society at New York University during fall 2008. From 2009 to 2011, she served as the Chair of the University of Victoria's Academic Women's Caucus.