Law community enriched by the presence of two Boulton fellows

The Faculty of Law is delighted to announce the appointment of Justine Collins as Boulton Junior Fellow and the reappointment of Mtre Tamara Thermitus, Ad E, as Boulton Senior Fellow for the 2024-25 academic year.

Justine Collins joins McGill from SOAS, University of London, where she served as the Usawa Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Law. A legal historian, she specializes in the intersection of law and society, particularly within colonial slavery laws of the Atlantic World. She will teach Comparative Modern Legal History at the Faculty in winter 2025.

Justine Collins completed her doctoral studies at the Goethe University Frankfurt in conjunction with the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History and Legal Theory in Frankfurt, Germany. Her thesis engaged legal comparative analysis to trace the origins and influences of the British Caribbean slavery codes. This thesis research - Tracing British West Indian Slavery: An Analysis of Legal Transplants - was published by Routledge in 2021.

Tamara Thermitus, Ad E, LLM’13, a member of the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, has had a distinguished career advocating for human rights. She negotiated the nature and scope of the mandate of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and chaired the federal Department of Justice's Advisory Committee on Visible Minorities. As Boulton Senior Fellow in 2023-24, she made vibrant contributions to the Faculty of Law’s intellectual life, regularly publishing articles and participating in events on critical issues such as racism, intersectionality, reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, and violence against women.

“We are thrilled to welcome Justine Collins and to continue our collaboration with Mtre Thermitus,” said Dean Robert Leckey, Ad E. “Their expertise and dedication will undoubtedly enrich our academic community and further our commitment to address pressing societal issues through legal scholarship.”