Professor Suzanne Bouclin teaches in the fields of social justice, human rights and dispute resolution. Her courses examine legal institutions and structures through lexicon, theories and critical methods. She holds a doctorate from McGill University, two interdisciplinary master's degrees and has been a member of the Ontario Bar since 2002.
Dr. Bouclin received the University of Ottawa's Young Researcher of the Year Award (2015), is a past member of the Global Young Academy (2016-2021), and received the Greenberg Award for Feminist Research (2022) for her monograph Women, Film, and Law (2021). This book examines how fictional representations of women's incarceration can illuminate the marginalization, social exclusion and oppression experienced by criminalized women. Her second book, An Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Dispute Resolution, fills an important gap in knowledge, as existing compendia are either written in English from an English Common Law perspective (and do not take into account the unique challenges of providing dispute resolution services in a minority language context) or in French, but are generally written from the perspective of civil law practitioners in Quebec or other French-speaking jurisdictions. Her current project is a study of how claims for social justice are constituted through film.
Professor Bouclin is highly regarded for her work in promoting access to justice. From 2016 to 2018, she was appointed to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario. In 2014, she re-launched the Ticket Defense Program - a free mobile legal clinic providing services to people experiencing homelessness in Ottawa. She has also substantively advanced equality by working for and with organizations such as the Court Challenges Program of Canada, the National Associations Active in Criminal Justice, the National Association of Women in Law, Étudiant.e.s ProBono and the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund. Her community work was recognized by her peers in 2014.
Suzanne Bouclin is a respected mediator, conducts workplace investigations and regularly trains decision-makers and members of the legal profession on unconscious bias.