Queen’s Law is recognizing Professors Ashwini Vasanthakumar and Grégoire Webber as the inaugural recipients of the Professor Les Green Award for Research Excellence.

Established in 2022 to honour Professor Emeritus Leslie Green (Artsci’78), the prize will be awarded to a Queen’s Law faculty member annually in recognition of their research excellence and to assist in funding their research.

Vasanthakumar and Webber are co-recipients of the prize, based on their outstanding individual research records. “Their respective nominations speak to the high standards for research that the Les Green prize is meant to reflect," says Dean Colleen M. Flood.

Ashwini Vasanthakumar is a Queen’s National Scholar in Legal and Political Philosophy. Joining Queen’s Law in 2018 from King’s College London, she is a political and legal philosopher with research interests in political obligation and authority, migration, and the ethics of resistance.

Making agenda-setting contributions in law, philosophy, and politics, her ongoing research explores three intersecting themes: the ethics of migration and border control, victims’ duties in the face of their oppression, and transitional justice and transnational political reconciliation. Her first monograph, The Ethics of Exile (Oxford University Press, 2021) explores refugees’ political activism, and argues that refugees are important transnational actors who engage in a transformative “politics from below.” Her current projects include Against Integration: on how to be a good immigrant (under contract with Polity Press), a book manuscript on victims’ duties, and two Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)-funded projects on transitional justice that combine analytic philosophy with empirical research methods.

Vasanthakumar’s research has been supported by a British Academy Rising Star award; SSHRC Insight Development and Insight grants; and fellowships from Yale, Queen’s, Uppsala, and Sydney universities. Since joining Queen’s in 2018, she has been awarded nearly $700,000 as a principal applicant and has been a co-applicant on two multi-million-dollar research projects with collaborators in Europe.

In addition to academic publications and conference presentations, Vasanthakumar’s research has public and policy impact. She has appeared on BBC World Radio and several podcasts, delivered keynote public lectures to community stakeholders, co-authored a brief as amici curiae in a case appearing before the U.S. Supreme Court, and submitted testimony to a government inquiry on diaspora politics and foreign interference.

"To be awarded a prize that honours Les (and to share it with Grégoire) means a great deal,” Vasanthakumar says. “Les exemplifies so many scholarly virtues, and has been incredibly generous, both intellectually and pastorally, so receiving a prize in his honour is a real privilege.”

Grégoire Webber is a Professor of Law and Philosophy who has made transformative and original contributions in the areas of human rights, constitutional theory, and legal philosophy. His argument that the Canadian Charter’s notwithstanding clause does not suspend rights, does not prevent a judicial challenge, and does not prevent a court from declaring that legislation is inconsistent with rights was published first in Policy Options and has animated challenges to Quebec’s Bill 21 and Saskatchewan’s “Parents’ Bill of Rights.” His forthcoming book, Political Constitutions (Cambridge University Press), and manuscript project on value, vulnerability, and law will make further significant scholarly contributions.

Since joining Queen’s in 2014 from the London School of Economics, Webber has secured appointment as a Canada Research Chair (2014 and renewed in 2019); internal funding from the Research Leaders’ Fund, the Catalyst Fund, and twice from SSHRC Institutional Grant competitions; and an Insight Development Grant and two Insight Grants. As a principal investigator he has received more than $1.5 million in research funding.

A committed mentor to students at all levels, Webber jointly founded, convenes, and funds the Queen’s Colloquium in Legal and Political Philosophy, the flagship course of the Graduate Program in Political and Legal Thought. The Colloquium course is a frequent topic of conversation among students who interview for clerkships and in the legal profession, as it is recognized to help students perfect their critical thinking and writing skills.

In addition to op-eds in multiple national and international newspapers and magazines, he has shared his research before the Canadian Human Rights Commission, the Canadian Bar Association, and the Department of Justice, and at universities throughout the world.

"Les has been a mentor, but even before I met him, I knew of him through his scholarship,” Webber said. “It modelled, for me, the marks of excellence in the work of an academic. To share the inaugural prize for research excellence in his name is a special distinction given all that Les has done to shape my approach to scholarship and to the academic role. I am proud to be associated with his name in this wonderful way, and all the more so to share the award with Ashwini.”

Vasanthakumar and Webber are “both tackling difficult theoretical questions that have tremendous practical implications, particularly for the most vulnerable in society,” Flood says.

Both recipients are also committed to ensuring that academia is an inclusive home for the next generation of scholars. Together, under the auspices of the Bruce Mitchell Research Program, they secured a doctoral trainee award for the Faculty of Law and will be co-supervisors. Recruitment for a doctoral student in the interdisciplinary areas of law, vulnerability, and oppression is now underway.

Professor Les Green graduated as Queen’s University’s political studies medalist in 1978 and went on to hold one of the most prestigious research positions in his field, the Professorship of the Philosophy of Law at Oxford University. From 2011 until his retirement in 2022, he returned to his alma mater for a term each year, teaching and furthering his research at Queen’s Law. Recognized as one of the world’s foremost legal philosophers in analytical jurisprudence, Green is a revered figure at Queen’s Law who has been a mentor to many of Queen’s legal philosophers. Read more about Green and his time at Queen’s.

Nominations for the 2024–2025 Professor Les Green Award for Research Excellence, which can be made by faculty, staff, or students, are expected to open in February 2025.

By Tracy Weaver