Matthew Wildcat is a member of Ermineskin Cree Nation. He is the Director of the Indigenous Governance and Partnership program and an assistant professor of Native Studies at the University of Alberta. He is a co-Director of the Prairie Indigenous Relationality Network. Matthew also provides governance and strategic advice to various Indigenous organizations and runs the Relational Governance Project that looks at how First Nations co-govern with each other.
Krishen Singh has a general litigation practice at Bennett Jones LLP. He enjoys advising clients on human rights and constitutional matters, and has assisted as counsel before all levels of Alberta courts as well as the Supreme Court of Canada. Prior to joining Bennett Jones, Krishen completed articles of clerkship with the Court of King's Bench of Alberta.
While attending law school at the University of Alberta, Krishen worked as a Writing Fellow for the university's Legal Research and Writing Program and completed an internship with the Alberta Court of Justice's Mental Health Court. He won the Bereskin & Parr LLP Prize in Intellectual Property and the Darcy Readman Prize in Personal Property Security Law. Prior to law school Krishen completed a Bachelor's of Science degree in Biological Sciences and Psychology.
Krishen has held positions with Student Legal Services and currently holds an executive position with the Canadian Bar Association Health Law Section.
Dr. Sevan Beukian (she/her/ան/هي) is the inaugural Director (Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility), Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at the University of Calgary. Prior to that, she was the Senior Executive Advisor on Anti-Racism and Intersectionality at the City of Edmonton. She has worked in provincial and municipal governments to incorporate GBA+, anti-racism and intersectionality into policies, programs, and systems change.
Beukian’s experience spans over a decade in teaching, research, and public policy across government, university, non-profit and community-based work. Her approach combines (non-Western) intersectional feminism, queer theory, anti-racism, trauma-informed approach, and anti-oppressive framework with a strong commitment to reconciliation and decolonization. These are shaped by her lived experience and identity as an immigrant and racialized woman from the SWANA region. Sevan respectfully acknowledges that she is a visitor in Treaty 7 Territory and in Métis Nation of Alberta Region 3.
Beukian holds a PhD in political science from the University of Alberta and a Master of Arts in political studies from the American University of Beirut from Lebanon. Her current research focuses on the way trauma and memory shape national identity discourses. It examines the impact of intergenerational traumatic memories (of genocide) and post-war experiences on national identity constructions, focusing on the Canadian and Armenian context. Beukian’s publications have appeared in Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, Armenian Review, Routledge, Demeter Press, Palgrave Macmillan, among others.
Dr. Rebecca Sockbeson is of the Penobscot Indian Nation, Indian Island, Maine, the Waponahki Confederacy of tribes located in Maine, United States and the Maritime provinces of Canada. She is the 8th child of the Elizabeth Sockbeson clan, the auntie of over 100 Waponahki & Stoney Sioux youth and the mother of three children who are also of the Alexis Nakota Sioux First Nation of Alberta. A political activist and scholar, she graduated from Harvard University where she received her master’s degree in education. She went on to confer her PhD in Educational Policy Studies at the University of Alberta, specializing in Indigenous Peoples Education. Her research focus is Indigenous knowledge, Aboriginal healing through language and culture, anti-racism and decolonization. Her doctoral study engages with how Indigenous ways of knowing and being can inform policy development. She currently serves as Associate Professor for the University of Alberta’s Indigenous Peoples Education Program, and Associate Director, Intersections of Gender, VPRI Signature Research Areas. In 2013, she and her Indigenous colleagues received a University of Alberta Human Rights Teaching Award for her role in coordinating and teaching Alberta’s first compulsory course in Aboriginal Education, EDU 211: Aboriginal Education & the Context for Professional Development. Sockbeson's poem, “Hear me in this concrete beating on my drum,” was a winning entry in the Word on the Street Poetry Project in 2018 and is sandblasted on a downtown Edmonton sidewalk as part of a permanent public art installation.
Philip Bryden, Q.C., is a Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Alberta and holds the TC Energy Chair in Administrative and Regulatory Law. From 2015-2019, Professor Bryden served as Deputy Minister of Justice and Solicitor General for Alberta. Prior to his work with the Alberta government, Professor Bryden was Dean of Law at the University of Alberta. Earlier in his academic career, Professor Bryden was a member of the Faculty of Law at the University of New Brunswick, where he served as Dean of Law. He began his academic career as a faculty member at the Faculty of Law of the University of British Columbia.
Valérie Lapointe-Gagnon is an Assistant Professor of History and Linguistic Rights at the Faculté Saint-Jean. She holds a doctorate in history from Laval University and is interested in the intellectual history of contemporary Québec and Canada, the contribution of intellectuals to society and constitutional issues. Her recent research explores the place of women in the Canadian political and intellectual history during the sixties. She published Panser le Canada, une histoire intellectuelle de la Commission Laurendeau-Dunton (Boréal, 2018), awarded by the Prix du livre politique de l’Assemblée nationale du Québec. She is the vice-president of Acfas-Alberta and member of the board of the AIEQ (Association internationale des études québécoises).
Leah is a Barrister & Solicitor with the Constitutional and Aboriginal Law team at Alberta Justice. She is a graduate of the University of Alberta Faculty of Law, where she was the recipient of the Horace Harvey Gold Medal in Law for the highest standing in her graduating class. Following graduation, Leah clerked with the Alberta Court of Appeal, before commencing her legal career in private practice. She joined Alberta Justice in 2019.
Leah is also a sessional instructor at the Faculty of Law, University of Alberta, and has taught courses in Canadian Human Rights Law and Constitutional Litigation. Before law school, Leah obtained a Bachelor of Commerce degree with a specialization in Finance, and worked as a Management Consultant with a large national consultancy firm.
Andrea Menard LL.B, LL.M is Métis from the abolished Red River Settlement and is the Lead Educational Developer, Indigenizing Curricula and Pedagogies, Office of the Provost and VP Academic & the Centre for Teaching and Learning at the University of Alberta. Andrea has over twenty years of experience relationship-building with Indigenous Nations across Treaties 4, 6, 7, 8, and 10 as well as the Métis Homeland regions across Alberta, and with Indigenous Nations in the unceded lands of British Columbia. Andrea has worked for various organizations that range from academic, government, Treaty-making, and legal non-profit and legal regulatory work, and teaches Reconciliation and Lawyers at the University of Calgary, Faculty of Law as well as In Search of Reconciliation Through Dispute Resolution at Osgoode Hall Law School. Co-founder of the Indigenous Lawyers' Forum, an Alberta-based networking group for Indigenous lawyers, legal academics and law students, Andrea is also on the Board of Directors for the Alternative Dispute Resolution Institute of Alberta (ADRIA), and on the Canadian Bar Association's National Indigenous Advisory Group - Criminal Justice
Steven Penney is a Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Alberta. Born and raised in Edmonton, he received a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Alberta and a Master of Laws from Harvard Law School. He researches, teaches, and consults in the areas of criminal procedure, evidence, substantive criminal law, privacy, and law and technology. He is co-author of Criminal Procedure in Canada and co-editor of Evidence: A Canadian Casebook and is a member of the advisory boards of the Alberta Law Review and Canadian Journal of Law & Justice. Previously, he was Associate Dean (Graduate Studies & Research) at the Faculty of Law, University of Alberta; Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Western Ontario; Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of New Brunswick, and law clerk to Mr. Justice Gérard V. La Forest of the Supreme Court of Canada. A selection of his recent research may be found at: https://ssrn.com/author=88993.
Malcolm Lavoie is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Alberta. His research deals with property law, judicial remedies, federalism, and issues of Indigenous land tenure and jurisdiction. He holds an SJD from Harvard Law School, where his graduate work was supported by a Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship, Weatherhead Center Graduate Research Fellowship, Fulbright Student Award, and a Project on the Foundations of Private Law Student Fellowship. He clerked for the Hon. Justice Frans Slatter of the Alberta Court of Appeal (2012-2013) and for the Hon. Justice Rosalie Abella of the Supreme Court of Canada (2013-2014). He is a past recipient of the Canadian Association of Law Teachers (CALT) Scholarly Paper Award and the Harvard Project on the Foundations of Private Law Writing Prize. His scholarship has also been cited by the Supreme Court of Canada. In addition to his research and teaching, Prof. Lavoie is an active member of the Alberta Bar. In his practice, he has advised First Nations governments on a range of legal issues. He also consults on commercial litigation and regulatory matters. He has previously argued before the Supreme Court of Canada. In addition to his role on the Advisory Board of the Centre for Constitutional Studies, Prof. Lavoie also serves on the Alberta Judicial Council and the board of the Edmonton Bar Association.