Members of the LLDRL

Prof. Adelle Blackett, LLDRL Director
Faculty of Law, McGill University

Adelle Blackett, F.R.S.C., Ad. E., is Professor of Law and the Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Transnational Labour Law at the Faculty of Law, McGill University. She holds a B.A. in History from Queen’s University, civil law and common law degrees from McGill, and an LL.M. and a doctorate in law from Columbia University.  An elected fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, she is currently a Visiting Professor at Cornell ILR School cross appointed at Cornell Law School for Fall 2023,  and has been named the Inaugural Chancellor Janice Fukakusa Racial Justice Scholar in Residence at Toronto Metropolitan University, a visiting professor at the Global College of Law at UC Louvain, a Centenary Visiting Fellow at SOAS London, the Innis Christie Visiting Professor at Dalhousie University, a Parsons Visitor at the University of Sydney, a Distinguished Visiting Faculty Member at the University of Toronto and has received the Bora Laskin National Human Rights Fellowship & the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Fellowship.  

Professor Blackett is widely published in the field of transnational labour law, with a focus on decolonial approaches. Her 2019 book manuscript entitled Everyday Transgressions: Domestic Workers’ Transnational Challenge to International Labor Law (Cornell University Press) garnered the Canadian Council on International Law’s (CCIL) 2020 Scholarly Book Award.   Her current SSHRC-funded research (Insight Grant) focuses on Slavery and the Law, and supports her general rapporteurship on contemporary forms of slavery for the International Academy of Comparative Law, in which she is an elected Associate Member.  She is the founding director of the Labour Law and Development Research Laboratory.

Much of Professor Blackett’s research is at the interface of trade and labour standards. Most recently she contributed a white paper for an initiative on Remaking Trade for Sustainable Development led by Dan Esty, Jan Yves Remy and Joel Trachtman. She is on the roster of experts for the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) Chapter 23 (Trade and Labour) and the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement Annex 31-B Lists of Rapid Response mechanism, and is a member of the International Labour Organization (ILO)’s Trade and Labour Advisory Committee. 

An innovative pedagogue, she developed a course on Slavery and the Law alongside a program of invited guest lectures in other courses, taught a course on law and development with the African Development Bank, and led courses with guest speakers on transnational labour law commemorating the ILO’s centenary in 2019 and featuring airline labour law in 2023.  She has received the 2020 McGill Principal’s Prize for Excellence in Teaching (Full Professor category), the 2019 Canadian Association of Law Teachers’ Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Award, and the 2023 McGill Graduate Law Student Association’s Excellence in Supervision and Mentorship Award.

Professor Blackett has significant human rights and labour rights leadership experience internationally and in Canada.  Internationally, this includes serving as the lead ILO expert in a treaty-making process on decent work for domestic workers, and preparing a draft Haitian labour code.  In Canada, she was unanimously appointed by the National Assembly of Québec to the Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse.  She also chaired the federal Human Rights Experts Panel.  She was appointed by the federal Minister of Labour to chair Canada’s new Employment Equity Act Review Task Force, whose report should be published in Fall 2023.  

Professor Blackett has played an active role in fostering equity in academia within and beyond McGill.  She chaired the Faculty of Law’s professorial recruitment committee for 5 consecutive years.  She founded the Dr. Kenneth Melville McGill Black Faculty Caucus, and was its first convener.  She is the principal drafter of the Scarborough Charter on Anti-Black Racism and Black Inclusion in Canadian Higher Education and a member of its Inter-institutional Steering Committee.

Professor Blackett’s contributions have been recognized by the Barreau du Québec’s Christine Tourigny Award of Merit and the status of Advocate Emeritus, the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, and the Canadian Association of Black Lawyers’ Pathfinder Award. She has been awarded honorary doctorates in law from Queen’s University, Université Catholique de Louvain, and Simon Fraser University. In June 2023, she was awarded the global Labour Law Research Network’s Bob Hepple Award for Lifetime Achievement in Labour Law.

Professor Laura Dehaibi

Laura is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Industrial Relations at the Université Laval. A member of the Quebec Bar since 2007, she holds a doctor in civil law from McGill University. As a postdoctoral fellow at McGill University with the LLDRL, she authored a special national report on mining in Perú and co-authored the general report for the International Academy of Comparative Law thematic report on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, including Causes and Consequences.  

Laura’s research focuses on the interaction between territory, labour law and social justice from the perspective of marginalized populations.  She is the author of Property, Power and Human Rights: Lived Universalism In and Through the Margins and has conducted research on the protection of freedom of association of agricultural workers from a transnational perspective. She is currently investigating the spatial dimensions of marginalization at work and how they play out in labour regulation, in particular in the context of gig work. 

Julia Selman-Ayetey

Julia is a doctoral candidate at the Institute of Air & Space Law, McGill University.  She is also a Senior Lecturer at the University of Cape Coast and has held academic positions at King's College London and the University of Oxford.  

Julia previously practiced law as a Barrister in London and is a former advisor to the UK government. She has published several book chapters and journal articles on constitutional, criminal and international law. Recently, she  authored the national report on Ghana, which informed the International Academy of Comparative Law thematic report on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, including Causes and Consequences.

Edward van Daalen 

Edward van Daalen is a postdoctoral fellow at the McGill Faculty of Law, where he mainly works on the intersections of international labour law, development, and children’s rights. He holds a PhD in law from the University of Geneva, for which he studied the role and resistance of organised working children in the history of international child labour law. He is the founder and organiser of two monthly seminar series: the ‘Children and Work Research Series’ (www.childrenandwork.net) and ‘Eating Popcorn like a Lawyer: A Law and Film Seminar’.

Leanna Katz

Leanna is a doctoral student at McGill University Faculty of Law, an  O'Brien Graduate Fellow at the McGill Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, and a SSHRC Doctoral Fellow.  Her research interests include labour and employment law, social welfare law, contract law, administrative law, and critical and feminist legal theory.  

Leanna's work has been published or is forthcoming in the Canadian Labour and Employment Law Journal, the Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law and Policy, the Windsor Review of Legal and Social Issues, and the Commonwealth Judicial Journal. 

Leanna previously clerked at the Supreme Court of Canada and the Court of Appeal for British Columbia, and was a litigator at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP. She earned an LL.M. from Harvard Law School, a J.D. from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law, and B.A.Sc. from McMaster University’s Arts and Science Program.  

Charles Lurquin

Charles Lurquin is a Doctoral Candidate (DCL) at McGill University Faculty of Law under the supervision of Prof. Adelle Blackett. He is also a GRIPP Graduate Fellow and a Research Assistant at the LLDRL in charge of the liaison with the #DemocratizingWork movement (https://democratizingwork.org). Prior to commencing his doctoral studies at McGill, he completed his legal education in Belgium at the Université catholique de Louvain. He later pursued a second master’s degree in political science at the Université de Montréal, focusing on political theory and legal theory. Charles’s research interests focus mainly on international, European, and transnational labour law, public international law, political theory, legal theory, and Law and Politics. His doctoral thesis focuses on a legal approach to workplace democracy, especially workers’ rights to participate in firms’ decision-making and their political rights in the Economy.

Mathilde Baril-Jannard 

Mathilde Baril-Jannard is an LLM thesis student at McGill Faculty of Law, under the supervision of Prof. Adelle Blackett. She is a recipient of a SSHRC Master Scholarship, and currently Associate Editor of the McGill Law Journal. Her academic research and interests are devoted to the necessary critique and re-evaluation of narrative foundations in labour law in order to transform the boundaries of our socio-legal imaginary. Her master’s thesis focuses on the work of African American visual artist Jacob Lawrence, The Migration Series, and, through it, questions the history of labour law and its articulation in North America. A graduate of the Université de Montréal (LL.B., J.D.), she practiced as a lawyer in the legal department of the Confédération des syndicats nationaux between 2014 and 2022. She was a finalist for the title of Best Lawyer of the Year (2023) by the Young Bar of Montréal in the Labour and Administrative Law category. She is equally involved in the university community, as co-organizer of the Eating Popcorn Like a Lawyer, a Law and Film seminar series, as she is in the LGBTQ2S+ community, notably as a member of the board of directors of GRIS-Montréal.  

Priyanka Preet

Priyanka Preet is a master’s student at the Faculty of Law with her thesis centred around improving the female labour force participation rate in India via special measures, in particular the Canadian Employment Equity model. She has been a recipient of the McGill Entrance Scholarship and the CRIMT Studentship for Better Work. She holds a B.A. LL.B.(Hons.) degree from National Law School, Lucknow, India with first division while also representing her university as a United Nations Millennium Fellow in 2021. In India, she freelanced as a legal journalist and interned at the Office of the Chief Justice of India, the Office of the Additional Solicitor General, chambers of Senior Advocates and the Central Information Commission, New Delhi. She has contributed several articles to national and international journals, national news websites, magazines and legal blogs. She has also presented her research at the University of Oxford, Dublin City University, Catolica University and McGill. While she has dealt with diverse areas of law in India and Canada, she enjoys delving into labour, constitutional, human rights and public international law.

Mohammed Odusanya

Mohammed is a graduate (BCL/JD 2024) of the Faculty of Law, McGill University, where he is a research assistant at the LLDRL since February 2022. Prior to commencing his law degree, he received a B.A. in Art History and Gender, Sexuality, Feminist & Social Justice Studies from McGill University.  

Mohammed is the founder of the Black (Canadian) Law Journal. He is also a member of the Black Law Students’ Association, and previously volunteered at the Legal Information Clinic at McGill University. Mohammed was awarded the Spirit of the Moot award at the 2023 Julius Alexander Isaac Moot competition, in addition to placing second overall with his teammate. He was also recognized through the Black Students’ Association of Canada Excellence Award in 2023.

Rébecca Brassard 

Rébecca Brassard, a French-Canadian originally from British Columbia, is deeply dedicated to social justice and the pursuit of legal advocacy. After completing her undergraduate studies in Political Science and Gender Studies at Simon Fraser University, she enrolled at McGill University for the BCL/JD program, and is currently in her third year. 

During her second year, Rebecca joined the Association for the Rights of Household and Farm Workers as a legal research intern. Presently serving as the Director of Communications at the Legal Information Clinic at McGill, Rebecca remains committed to advancing her interests in worker and tenant rights. Her role as a Research Assistant at the Labour Law and Development Research Laboratory further allows her to delve deeper into her passion for labour law. 

Navya Baradi

Navya Baradi is a B.C.L./J.D. candidate at McGill Faculty of Law. She holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Alberta, and throughout her degree, she was involved in various community and student organizations to support a gender-diverse workforce. She is a Senior Editor of the McGill Journal of Sustainable Development Law and an executive member of the Women of Colour Collective. As Navya begins her legal career, she looks forward to exploring the intersection of gender, labour, and human rights in an international business environment.

 

Dr. Dzodzi Tsikata
SOAS, University of London  and Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana

Dzodzi Tsikata is Distinguished Research Professor of Development Studies at SOAS, University of London, and an Adjunct Professor at the Institute of African Studies (IAS) at the University of Ghana.

Her research in the last 30 years has been in the areas of the labour relations of agrarian and  urban informal economies, and the trajectories of African social policy regimes. Her recent publications include. “How Global Norms and Standards Work in Sub-National Spaces: A View of the Coalface of Contract Farming in Ghana” in Jha, P., Yeros, P., Chambati, W. and Mazwi, F. (eds) Farming and Working under Contract: Peasants and Workers in Global Agricultural Value Systems. Tulika Books, New Delhi (2022); Tsikata, D. & Eweh, P. (2021) “Does Formalisation Improve Women’s Work Conditions? A Review of the Regulatory Regime for Contract Famring and Domestic Trade in Ghana”, in Ghosh, J, Informal Women Workers in the Global South: Policies and Practices for the Formalisation of Women’s Employment in Developing Economies, (pp. 88-136); London and New York: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group; and Darkwah, A., Tsikata, D. 2021. “Home-based work and homework in Ghana: An exploration”, ILO Working Paper 22 (Geneva, ILO). She is also the Principal Investigator of a pan-African research, networking and advocacy project, the Gender Equitable and Transformative Social Policy for Post-COVID-19 Africa (GETSPA). She is the secretary of the executive committee of IDEAS and a member of the Agrarian South Network.

 

Prof. Lorena Poblete
Argentina's National Research Council and the National University of San Martín

Professor Lorena Poblete holds a Master's degree in Social Anthropology, Ethnology and Ethnography, and a PhD in Sociology from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris, France. She is a specialist in labor regulations and social security regimes. Her most recent research focuses on the analysis of regulatory reforms on domestic work in Latin America, digital labor platforms, and the study of labor conflict resolution mechanisms of domestic workers in Argentina. 

She is a researcher at CONICET (Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas de Argentina) and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses at Escuela Interdisciplinaria de Altos Estudios Sociales, Universidad Nacional de San Martín. She was visiting scholar in residence at Université de Lille 1 and Université de Nantes (France); Frei Universität Berlin and Europa-Universität Viadrina (Germany); Princeton University (USA) and McGill University (Canada). Dr. Poblete visited the LLDRL as an  O'Brien Fellow in Residence  from April to July 2018. During her fellowship, she pursued her research on the enforcement of domestic workers’ labour rights in Argentina. 

Professor Poblete is co-coordinator of the Núcleo de Estudios Sociales sobre Regulaciones y Burocracias (EIDAES/UNSAM), and is a member of the CRIMT (Centre de Recherche Interuniversitaire sur la Mondialisation et le Travail), and the Center for Interdisciplinary Labour Law Studies (Europa-Universität Viadrina). 

 

Prof. Louise Boivin
Department of Industrial Relations, Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO)

Professor Louise Boivin holds a doctorate from the School of Industrial Relations at the University of Montreal. For the last twenty years, she has been studying the sociology of labour. She is particularly interested in the precarization of work and employment, and in associative and union action by workers. Her work analyes the intersectional manifestations of the social divisions of labour (based on gender, racialization, immigration status and class). Her fields of study are mainly home help and accommodation services for the elderly and people with disabilities, as well as respite services for family carers. Several of her studies, including her thesis directed by Prof. Guylaine Vallée, have focused on the difficulties of applying labour law, notably collective representation rights, in the most precarious forms of care work. She also coordinated the UQO team, which in 2021 produced Outils d’éducation aux droits du travail dans le Chèque emploi-service, in partnership with the organization Ex aequou, offering training under the aegis of CREATAS. 

Professor Boivin is an honorary professor at the Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO), having been a regular professor in the industrial relations department from 2012 until her retirement in 2022. She is now a researcher affiliated with the Collectif de recherche-action sur le travail et l'association socioéconomique (CREATAS), a member of LLDRL and RéQEF, and an associate researcher at CRIMT. Previously, as a freelance journalist, she produced written, radio and video reports in Quebec and Central America for various conventional and alternative media. She was also a volunteer in the 2000s with the Ligue des droits et libertés, coordinating the Committee for the Rights of Migrants and Refugees.   

Visitors

Professor Jason Haynes

Dr Haynes has served as a legal consultant to several governments and international organisations, including the Governments of Canada, Jamaica, Barbados and St Vincent and the Grenadines, the American Bar Association (Rule of Law Initiative), the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL), CARICOM and European Union (EDF Programme), the World Bank and the Caribbean Association of National Olympic Committees (CANOC). He has also provided expert advice to various governments and international organisations, including the UNODC, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA), USAID, and INTERPOL. 

He drafted the Protection of Persons with Disability Bills for Barbados and St Vincent and the Grenadines; as well as the IOM’s Model Legislation on Migrant Smuggling; and the American Bar Association’s Guide for Judges and Prosecutors on Human Trafficking. In his capacity as National Rapporteur on Contemporary Slavery for the International Academy of Comparative Law, he drafted the Report on the continuities and discontinuities between historic and contemporary forms of slavery in the Caribbean. As a member of the Sentencing Advisory Committee, Dr Haynes, along with leading Judges from the Caribbean and UK, also drafted Sentencing Guidelines for the nine Eastern Caribbean countries that are under the jurisdiction of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court.  

His book  Caribbean Anti-Trafficking Law and Practice  (2019) is widely used by law enforcement, judicial officers, prosecutors, and policy makers, while his co-authored book,  Commonwealth Caribbean Sports Law  (2020), has informed the operational policies of several sporting federations in the Caribbean, and is a key point of reference in the resolution of sporting disputes between athletes and sporting federations. 

His research on human trafficking won the UNESCO/Juan Bosch Prize for Outstanding Contribution to Social Science Research in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2022. 

Dr. Anne Trebilcock

Dr Anne Trebilcock is former Legal Advisor, International Labour Organization, where she occupied a variety of posts over the years. These included providing advisory services on labour law reform in many countries, and serving as co-director of the programme promoting the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work. She is currently associated with the Institute for Labour Law, University of Göttingen, Germany and has lectured at universities in North America and Europe.  A former Vice-President of the Asian Development Bank Administrative Tribunal and of the GAVI Alliance Appeals Tribunal, she has been a member of the NATO Administrative Tribunal since 2021, and is an on-call arbitrator for the International Development Law Organization. She is also on the roster of the European Union to chair expert panels under the EU’s trade agreements with third countries. 

Anne Trebilcock is co-editor of Droit international social (2013), the Research Handbook on Transnational Labour Law (2015), and Social Justice and the World of Work: Possible Global Futures (2023), editor of Comparative Labour Law (research collection, 2018), and author of numerous journal articles. She serves on the editorial board of International Labour Rights Case Law, for which she has done translations from French and Spanish as well as short commentaries. 

She writes on the ILO and its standards, business and human rights, and discrimination.  A member of the State Bar of Michigan, she holds a B.A. from Wellesley College and a J.D. from Berkeley Law. In 2020 she was awarded a doctor honoris causa by the Faculty of Law of the University of Göttingen.  

Alumni

What then was the Labour Law and Development Research Network convened for the first time in 2007. It reunited a small, cohesive, but non-exclusive collective of researchers whose expertise and experience reach beyond the frame of labor regulation as it has traditionally been defined. This comprised Rose-Marie Belle Antoine, Professor of Labour Law and Offshore Financial Law, and Dean at the Faculty of Law, University of the West-Indies; Diamond Ashiagbor, now Professor of Law and Director of Research at the Institute of Advanced Studies in London; Chantal Thomas, Professor of Law and Director of the Clarke Initiative for Law and Development in the Middle East and North Africa, Cornell University; Dzodzi Tsikata, then Head of the Centre for Gender Studies and Advocacy (CEGENSA), and Associate Professor, Institute of Statistical, Social, and Economic Research (ISSER) at the University of Ghana; and Adelle Blackett, currently serving as the Director of the LLDRL. 

The Network originally met as a reading group focused on North-South relations in the regulation of the new economy, and considered the ways in which economic restructuring re-creates conditions of the South in the North. A focus was deliberately put on Africa and the African diaspora, which required an attention to the earlier forms of racialized and gendered market construction. The collective’s thorough engagement with each other's work led to a special issue in the Comparative Labor Law and Policy Journal on Labour Law and Development (2011). 

This special issue was the beginning of the Network members’ research, thinking and writing on a framework for labor law that looks global inequality and post-colonial situatedness squarely in the eyes. This early work has profoundly shaped the LLDRL, which, almost twenty years later, stays true to the Network’s mission. 

Postdoctoral fellows 

• Laura Dehaibi, DCL 2020, McGill 
• Liam McHugh Russell, PhD 2019, European University Institute 
• Thierry Galani Tiemeni, LLD 2015, University of Western Cape 
• Armel Brice Adanhounme, PhD, HEC Montréal 
• Martin Gallié, LLD 2006, Université de Paris X 

Doctoral researchers 

• Si Chen, DCL, McGill 
• Myriam Dumont-Robillard, DCL 2018, McGill 
• Isabelle Deschamps, DCL, McGill 
• Sabaa Khan, DCL, McGill – Scientific Coordinator 
• Zobaida Khan, DCL, McGill 
• Gabriela Medici, PhD 2015, University of Zurich 
• Maude Choko, DCL 2015, McGill 

Research assistants  

• Béatrice Rutayisire, BCL/JD 2024, McGill
• Austin McDougall, BCL/JD 2024, McGill
• Husna Sarwar, BCL/JD 2024, McGill
• Audrey Parent, BCL/JD 2023, McGill
• Georgia Therriault, BCL/JD 2023, McGill
• Larissa Parker, BCL/JD 2021, McGill 
• Morgan McGinn, BCL/JD 2021, McGill 
• Lian Francis, BCL/JD 2020, McGill 
• Zakia Jahan, BCL/JD 2020, McGill 
• Cassandra Richards, BCL/JD 2019, McGill 
• Sydney Lang, BCL/JD 2019, McGill 
• Emily Ann Painter, BCL/JD 2019, McGill 
• Talia Ralph, BCL/LLB 2019, McGill 
• Alice Mirlesse, BCL/LLB 2018, McGill 
• Aurélie Lanctôt, BCL/LLB 2017, McGill  
• Michael Blashko, BCL/LLB 2017, McGill Renz Ciron, BCL/LLB 2017 
• Mark Phillips, BCL/LLB 2015, McGill 
• Marion Rebière, LLM 2015, McGill 
• Juan Sebastian Rodriguez Alarcón, LLM 2015, McGill 
• Angela Slater, BCL/LLB 2015, McGill – LLDRL Intern in International Human Rights 
• Marion Sandilands, BCL/LLB 2014, McGill 
• Hugo Collin-Desrosiers, BCL/LLB 2013, McGill 
• Amanda Gibeault, BCL/LLB 2012 – Scientific Coordinator 
• Daniel Crespo, BCL/LLB 2012 
• Mae Nam, BCL/LLB 2011, McGill 
• Sarah Goldbaum, BCL/LLB 2011, McGill 
• Kathleen Kaufman, BCL/LLB 2010, McGill – Scientific Coordinator 
• Gregory Ko, BCL/LLB 2010, McGill 
• Alika Hendricks, BCL/LLB 2009, McGill – Scientific Coordinator 
• Gaël Pétillon, BCL/LLB 2009, McGill 
• Kathleen Hadekel, BCL/LLB 2009, McGill 
• Alison Adam, BCL/LLB 2008, McGill 
• Adrienne Gibson, BCL/LLB 2008, McGill 
• Tatiana Gomez, BCL/LLB 2008, McGill 
• Mélyssa Rinaldo, LLM 2005, Université de la Rochelle 
• Amarkai Laryea, BCL/LLB 2002, McGill 
• Andina van Isschot, BCL/LLB 2002, McGill 
• Margaret Williams, PhD Candidate in Education, McGill – Scientific Coordinator 
• Nadir Khan, BCL/JD, McGill 
• Amina Chaouni, BCL/LLB, McGill 
• Yéfoungnigui Silué  
• Lucia Pizarro 
• Sabrina Ghellab