Marilyn Coupienne is currently a doctoral student in law at the University of Ottawa. She is a recipient of a grant from the Fonds de recherche du Québec - Société et culture (FRQSC) as well as an excellence scholarship from the University of Ottawa. Having begun her doctorate at the University of Quebec à Montreal (UQÀM), she was also awarded the 2017 Claude-Thomasset-et-René-Laperrière Fellowship for theses favoring a critical and social analysis of law.
Her thesis aims to study how the social construction of neglect by socio-judicial actors (DPJ and Chambre de la jeunesse) operates and the influence of this phenomenon on the overrepresentation of low socioeconomic status families in the youth protection system. More generally, her research interests focus on youth law, criminal law, access to justice, sociocriminology, particularly the question of social control exercised by the law, and qualitative methods.
Previous academic studies
Marilyn Coupienne received her Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQÀM) in 2013. She is a member of the Quebec Bar since 2016 and holds a Master's degree in Criminal and Constitutional Law from McGill University (2016).
Work experience
Prior to devoting herself full-time to her doctoral studies, Ms. Coupienne worked as a child and parent advocate in child protection law as well as a defense attorney for adult and young offenders in criminal law for a Community Legal Center and a private legal study.
She is currently a lecturer at the University of Quebec in Montreal where she has been teaching legal research methodology, criminal and penal law, and early childhood law since 2018. She is also a research assistant for a research project funded by SSHRC and headed by Professor Emmanuelle Bernheim. Which aims, in general, to illustrate the obstacles to access to law and justice and, specifically, to document and analyze situations of non-use of the law by litigants in youth protection.
On occasion, she acts as a consultant for various research and teaching projects. In particular, she has contributed to the adaptation of a training program on the protection of children in the context of domestic violence within the youth protection system. She is also a member of the Laboratoire de recherche interdisciplinaire sur les droits de l'enfant (LRIDE).
To view her publications.