News

The Schulich School of Law is pleased to welcome its newest Fellows for the 2022-2023 academic year. Melisa Marsman and Akinwumi Ogunranti will join the law school as Purdy Crawford Fellows along with Amanda Turnbull and Joshua Shaw as Schulich Fellows.

Purdy Crawford Fellows and Schulich Fellows contribute to teaching in the JD program, advancing their research, and participating in the intellectual life of the law school in a way that supports their development as scholars and teachers.

Melisa Marsman – Purdy Crawford Fellow

Melisa has been practicing law in Nova Scotia since 2006, initially as a private practitioner in business law (including corporate transactions and securities regulation), and then as in-house counsel at Dalhousie University where she advises on a variety of legal areas, including commercial contracts, research contracts, intellectual property law, information technology law, privacy law, and risk management.

Fuelled with passion and curiosity, Melisa recently completed graduate studies at the Schulich School of Law in the areas of critical race legal theory, legal history, and real property law (including land titles). Through this work, Melisa critically examined colonial land administration laws and the racially disparate impact of those laws on African Nova Scotians, especially in terms of land allocations and land titles. Her research interests are grounded in critical perspectives on the law. Combining these interests with her practice experience, Melisa is thrilled to advance her graduate research into legal scholarship on business law and race, specifically from an African Nova Scotian perspective.

As a part-time faculty member at the Schulich School of Law, Melisa currently teaches Professional Responsibility and plans to teach business law courses in the 2022-23 academic year. She also serves on the law school’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion committee and is a member of Dalhousie’s African Nova Scotian Strategy Working Group and Advisory Council. Being a long-time supporter of Dalhousie, as a lawyer and a learner, Melisa is honoured to continue serving the university community through this teaching and research fellowship opportunity.

Akinwumi Ogunranti – Purdy Crawford Fellow

Akinwumi Ogunranti (Akin) is currently completing his PhD dissertation, “Africa’s Contribution to the Development of the Norm of Corporate Responsibility to Respect Human Rights” at the Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University. His research focuses on the intersection between businesses, human rights, and the environment. He examines how social norms and institutions can influence corporate conduct in their responsibilities to respect human rights and the environment. Akin focuses on issues about corporate accountability, access to justice, and business ethics. As a Purdy Crawford Fellow, he will be continuing his research on the socio-legal relevance of judicial decisions in promoting a corporate responsibility norm. As an innovative thinker with a deep passion for access to justice issues, he has published nationally and internationally. His recent paper, “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea—Towards Access to Justice for Local Communities in Investor-state Arbitration or Business and Human Rights Arbitration” is forthcoming in the Osgoode Law Journal.

Akin joined the law school as an LLM student in 2016 and continued with his PhD program in 2018. Since starting his graduate studies, he has received various awards, including the Law Foundation of Nova Scotia entrance scholarship, the Dean Ronald St. John MacDonald Graduate Fellowship in Law, and the Schulich Fellowship. He has also been a part-time professor at the law school, teaching first-year courses: contracts and legal ethics.

Before his graduate studies, Akin practiced law in a full-service law firm in Nigeria. He is a member of the Nigerian Bar, the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, and the Association of Certified Anti-money Laundering Specialists. He also holds a certificate of qualification from the Federation of Law Societies of Canada.

Amanda Turnbull – Schulich Fellow

Amanda Turnbull is a PhD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. Her doctoral research entitled, “The Algorithmic Turn,” contributes to the investigation of the pitfalls and possibilities that Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms pose for law as they begin to replace human decision-makers. More specifically, her research interests include law and technology, contracts, the philosophy of law and legal theory. Her most recent publications focus on the global “onlife” implications of the Algorithmic Turn in society—those that are positioned beyond the increasingly artificial distinction between the online and offline worlds.

Amanda began her career in the discipline of the Arts working as a music teacher and performer before embarking on her path to law. She is an interdisciplinary scholar committed to fostering dynamic thinking in our increasingly complex and globalized world where legal problems are becoming much more than problems about law.

Amanda has a diploma in Applied Music (flute), an ARCT (flute performance), a BA (Ottawa), and an MA (Carleton). This year, she is a sessional professor in the Ethics, Law & Society program at Trinity College (University of Toronto). Previously, she taught a section of a philosophy course at York University (2019-21). Amanda is also a former Assistant Dean of the Juris Doctor Program at the Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, a position that she held for over eight years.

Joshua Shaw – Schulich Fellow

Joshua is a legal theorist who researches the relationship of law to dead and living human bodies, and to bodily materials. This involves study of doctrines and theories of tort law, property and equity, as well as studying law in historical and social context. He has numerous articles published in peer-reviewed journals dedicated to jurisprudence or the social study of law, such as Law and Critique; Law, Culture and Humanities; International Journal of Law in Context, and the Canadian Journal of Law and Society.

Joshua is finishing his PhD at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University, which has been supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Prior to his PhD, he was educated in his home province of Manitoba and in Nova Scotia. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science (Honours in Psychology, Minor in Biology), Juris Doctor from the University of Manitoba, and Master of Laws from Dalhousie University.

He is a lawyer, having articled at the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario (IPC/O) and having received his call to the Bar of Ontario as a barrister and solicitor in 2017. He continued to work at the IPC/O within their Health Policy Department on legislative and public policy matters. He previously taught at Osgoode Hall Law School, and at the University of Windsor, and was a visiting junior fellow at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies. Joshua has contributed to research projects funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada on legalities of 3D bioprinted materials, and ethics in aerospace engineering. He can be found on Twitter at @JoshuaDMShaw.