Kuukuwa Andam
PhD Candidate
Kuukuwa Andam is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Law, Queens University. Her thesis focuses on how female sexual minorities in Ghana are using technology for activism. Her research interests are human rights law, international law, labor and employment law, feminist legal studies, gender and sexuality, and African Studies.
Graduate Student
Ekaterina Antsygina
PhD Candidate
Ekaterina Antsygina joined Queen’s University as a PhD student in September 2017. Her research is devoted to the delimitation of extended continental shelves in the Arctic Ocean.
Graduate Student
Delano Aragao Vaz
PhD Candidate
Delano is currently a Ph.D. student in the Faculty of Law, Queen’s University. As an Ontario Trillium Scholarship holder, he is exploring the intersectionality of law and surveillance. His research focuses on socio-legal issues related to race, colonialism, big data, national security, and (suppression of) dissent.
Graduate Student
Martha Patricia Ballenas Loayza
PhD Candidate
Martha Patricia Ballenas Loayza is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Law, Queens University. Her thesis focuses on the religious-conscientious exemption as a guarantee of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience.
Patricia has worked as an Associate Professor in the National Academy for Judges and Prosecutors - National Government of Peru. Patricia has also worked as a Legal Affairs Manager for Financiera Confianza, a company of the BBVA Foundation.
Graduate Student
Aleksandra Balyasnikova-Smith
PhD
Aleksandra Balyasnikova-Smith successfully defended her dissertation and completed the requirements for the Ph.D. degree in Law in the Fall Semester of 2022.
Aleksandra (Sasha) joined Queen’s Law as a Ph.D. student in September 2018. Here she developed and defended a case for global environment trust, which clarifies the nature and content of duties of States owed toward humankind with respect to the global environment.
Graduate Student
Cristóbal Caviedes
PhD Candidate
Cristóbal Caviedes successfully defended his PhD thesis in January 2020 and will convocate in Spring 2020.
Cristóbal is a PhD candidate and international constitutional law researcher at Queen's Law, with the provisional thesis title "On Constitutional Courts’ Voting Rules". He has several publications to his credit, including ones in the American Journal of Jurisprudence and Ius et Praxis.
Graduate Student
Ana Patricia Chuc Gamboa
PhD Candidate
Ana is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Law, Queens University. Her thesis attempts to find better coordination between free trade regulations and the protection and respect of human rights.
Graduate Student
Santino Dau
PhD
Santino Dau successfully defended and convocated with a PhD from Queen's Law in the fall of 2018.
Santino Dau has had a diverse teaching experience including assisting with a Labor and Employment Law course at Queen’s University and working as a seasonal instructor at the Royal Military College (RMC). Santino holds an LLM from Dalhousie University and has received the Queen’s University Faculty of Law Student Award (2016-2017) and the Robert Sutherland Fellowship (2014-2015).
Graduate Student
Alicia Elias-Roberts
PhD Candidate
Alicia Elias-Roberts is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Law, Queens University. Her thesis focuses on petroleum activities in disputed maritime areas and a positivist approach to international law.
Alicia served in academia for over 18 years and was the Deputy Dean in the Faculty of Law at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad and Tobago and was a former Head of Department of Law at the University of Guyana.
Graduate Student
Wondwossen Firew
PhD Candidate
Prior to becoming a Mastercard Foundation Fellow and joining Queen’s University Faculty of Law in 2019, Wondwossen Firew held a position as an Assistant Professor of Law at the School of Law of University of Gondar for 10 years. In addition to his academic post, he served the School of Law as its Dean. During the past six years, he held an administrative position, in addition to his academic position.
Graduate Student
Rory Fowler
PhD Candidate
Lieutenant-Colonel (retired) Rory Fowler retired from the Canadian Forces after having served for nearly 28 years, first as an infantry officer with the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, and subsequently as a Legal Officer with the Office of the Judge Advocate General. In the latter role, Rory worked extensively in the area of Public and Administrative Law as both a legal advisor and educator. Among other positions, Rory served as the Director of Law – Compensation, Benefits, Pensions & Estates and the Director of Law – Administrative Law.
Graduate Student
Maseeh Haseeb
PhD Candidate
Haseeb is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Law, Queens University. His thesis focuses on the political genealogy of Canadian national security discourse. In particular, this research explores the emergence of national security in Canada to investigate how race has been historically embedded in political practices of national security from the 19th to 21st century.
Graduate Student
Michele Leering
PhD Candidate
Michele is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Law, Queens University. Her thesis documents the imperatives for legal education reform, specifically the contribution of “Reflective Practice” as a professional learning theory of benefit to legal educators, law students, and legal practitioners. Her research compares approaches in Canadian and Australian law schools in traditional law and experiential learning courses.
Graduate Student
Hiwot Mekuanent
PhD Candidate
Hiwot joined the Queen's University Faculty of Law in September 2018. She will be applying her doctoral work at Queen’s Law to help improve the lives of people with disabilities. Admitted into the school’s PhD program as an “exceptional faculty leader” from the University of Gondar in Ethiopia, she has received a Mastercard Foundation Scholarship at Queen’s University to complete her studies. Hiwot’s research focuses on why Ethiopia still has disability discriminatory legal and institutional frameworks against international human rights standards.
Graduate Student
Ryan Minor
PhD Candidate
Ryan is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Law, Queens University. His primary research area concerns the use of the tax system to stimulate research and development in Canada. His thesis concerns the potential for Canada to enact a "patent box" under which firms that develop qualifying intellectual property are encouraged to commercialize the IP worldwide from Canada by a low tax rate. Patent boxes are common in Europe and empirical work on the effectiveness of such regimes is sparse.
Graduate Student
Abayomi Okubote
PhD Candidate
Abayomi is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Law, Queens University. His thesis focuses on third-party funding (TPF) in International Arbitration and proposes a harmonized framework for the regulation of TPF.
Abayomi Okubote worked in Olaniwun Ajayi LP (a top tier commercial law firm in Nigeria) and has garnered almost 10 years’ experience in dispute resolution. At Olaniwun Ajayi LP, he was part of the teams that represented multinational and domestic corporations in commercial law disputes. He has advised government agencies on several cutting-edge projects in Africa.
Graduate Student
Sarojini Persaud
PhD candidate
Saro is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Law, Queens University. Her work at Queen's Law pertains to the impact of tax administration agreements, between select First Nations and the Canada Revenue Agency, on First Nations self-governance and self-determination.
Graduate Student
Ksenia Polonskaya
PhD
Ksenia Polonskaya successfully defended and convocated with a PhD from Queen's Law in the fall of 2018.
Graduate Student
João Rocha
PhD Candidate
João Carlos Vieira Costa Cavalcanti Rocha is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Law, Queen’s University. His dissertation explores the normative democratic theory and constitutional law, including comparative perspectives.
He obtained an LLM at Queen’s University in 2019. His thesis revolved around an authoritarian era in the history of Brazil – the dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas – and its relationship with anti-liberal legal thought.
Graduate Student
Bekele Worku
PhD Candidate
Bekele joined Queen’s Faculty of Law PhD program in September 2018. His thesis focus is on International Human Rights Law. Bekele is conducting a scholarly examination on issues regarding the proper implementation of the rules and principles enshrined in the international human rights instruments Ethiopia ratified, with a provisional title "Ethiopian Legal and Institutional Mechanisms for the Enforcement of the Right of Education of the Disabled under International Law".
Graduate Student