Expertise: Art+Law

Hewitt, Jeffery G.

Jeffery G. Hewitt joined Osgoode Hall Law School in 2019 as an Assistant Professor. After graduating from Osgoode with an LLB in 1996, Professor Hewitt returned to complete his LLM in 2015. He focuses a lot on matters starting with “I” – such as Indigenous, Interdisciplinary and Iconic. Professor Hewitt’s research interests include Indigenous legal orders and governance, constitutional law, human rights, legal education, business law, as well as art + law and visual legal studies. He mainly teaches constitutional law and Indigenous-related courses and seminars.

Professor Hewitt has also presented his research work nationally and internationally to a range of audiences. He is mixed-descent Cree, was called to the Bar in Ontario in 1998 and works with Rama First Nation as well as various Indigenous Elders, leaders and organizers in the promotion of Indigenous legal orders. He has done a mix of other things as well, serving as past-President of the Indigenous Bar Association of Canada, director of Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto, and he once wore an iconic NASA space suit. Currently, Professor Hewitt is on the Executive of Legal Leaders for Diversity, and serves as a director of both the Indigenous Bar Association Foundation as well as the National Theatre School of Canada.

Somehow, along the way Professor Hewitt has managed to collect a few acknowledgments including a 2019 Law Society of Ontario Medal; a 2019 Excellence in Research Award, University of Windsor; a 2017 Teaching Award from the University of Windsor; the 2015 Charles D. Gonthier Fellowship from the Canadian Institute for the Administration of Justice; a 2014 Teaching Award from Osgoode; a 2013-14 McMurtry Fellow at Osgoode Hall Law School; and a 2011 Canadian General Counsel Award for Social Responsibility.

Bandopadhyay, Saptarishi

I am an Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School. I am also a research Fellow at the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research at York University, and a Senior Fellow at Melbourne University Law School.

My first book, All Is Well: Catastrophe and the Making of the Normal State was published by Oxford University Press in 2022. In All Is Well, I offer a history of the mutually constitutive relationship between disasters and states during the eighteenth-century and show the enduring influence of the underlying narratives, instincts, techniques, and practices on global disaster management today.

I am currently working on two book projects. The first examines the history of war, environmental degradation/disasters, and human displacement from 1860 to the present. This research is funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Council Insight Development Grant and supported by Osgoode Hall Law School, York University’s Center for Refugee Studies, and the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research. The second book project presents a legal and environmental history of the relationship between the international environmentalism movement of the 1960s and 70s, and contemporary global crises of food insecurity and climate change.

I have published in encyclopedias, edited volumes and in legal and interdisciplinary journals such as the University of British Columbia Law Review, the Fordham Environmental Law Review, Global Jurist, the Indian Journal of International Law, and the Journal of Intellectual Property Rights. I occasionally write essays and book reviews for public facing periodicals and websites and have developed several case studies for Harvard Law School’s Case Studies Program.

During 2016-2017, I was a Visiting Professor and Catalyst Fellow at Osgoode, and an adjunct faculty at Northeastern University School of Law. I hold an SJD, an interdisciplinary doctorate from Harvard Law School, LLMs from Harvard Law School and American University’s Washington College of Law, and a BA LLB (with honors) from the National University of Juridical Sciences, India.

At Harvard, I received the Irving Oberman Memorial Environmental Law Prize and the Abram Chayes International Public Service Fellowship. I have also received research and advocacy fellowships from the Canadian Social Sciences and Research Council, the American Society for Legal History, the American Society for Environmental History, the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University’s Office for Scholarly Communication, the Public International Law and Policy Group, the Center for International Environmental Law, Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.

I have studied and worked in disaster management in central India, in the borderlands between India, Pakistan, and China, and in the Philippines. I have also trained and advised officials and civil society in India, Thailand, Canada, and at the United Nations. From 2006 to 2010, I was an associate with Radon & Ishizumi in New York and worked on pharmaceutical and biotechnology projects. During this time, I also advised public authorities and corporate clients on constitution development in Nepal and environmental policymaking in the Caucasus, respectively.

Twitter: @saptarishi_b

Research Interests: Law, history, and politics of Disasters, International law, State formation, Environmental law and politics, Environmental conflict, Humanitarianism, Human displacement, Risk, Copyright.