Expertise: Health Law

Mykitiuk, Roxanne

Roxanne Mykitiuk is a Full Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, where she engages in research and teaching in the areas of Disability Law, Health Law, Bioethics and Family Law. She is the founder and Director of the Disability Law Intensive clinical program and the Director of Osgoode’s part-time LLM program specializing in Health Law. She is a member of the core faculty in the graduate program in Critical Disability Studies at York University.  From 2018-2021 Professor Mykitiuk was the Faculty Co-Chair of Enable York and was the Chair of York University’s Senate from 2013-2015.

Professor Mykitiuk is nationally and internationally recognized for her work in disability law and the regulation of reproductive and genetic technologies and reproductive health more generally.  From 1990-1992 she was Senior Legal Researcher for the Canadian Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies. From 2002-2006 she was a member of the Ontario Advisory Committee on Genetics and from 2005-2008, she was a member of the Ethics Committee of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada. In 2009 Professor Mykitiuk was scholar in residence at the Law Commission of Ontario working on the Disability and Law Project. She is currently on the Board of Directors of ARCH Disability Law Clinic. Professor Mykitiuk has been consulted by a range of actors in policy making and litigation contexts and provided expert opinion related to her areas of expertise.

Professor Mykitiuk is an active, engaged and collaborative researcher. She is the author or co-author of numerous articles, book chapters and books investigating the legal, ethical and social implications of reproductive and genetic technologies and the legal construction and regulation of embodiment and disability.  Some of her more recent research created and investigated arts-based methods – digital stories and drama-based narratives – as a means of challenging and re-representing experiences, images and conceptions of disability and normalcy.

Professor Mykitiuk’s research has been funded by CIHR, SSHRC, the Australian Research Council, Genome Canada and the European Research Council, among other funding bodies.

In a currently funded SSHRC project, she is using legal research and digital story making to investigate episodic disability in the workplace and to assist employers to adopt policies that are accommodating to the needs of variously positioned workers with episodic disabilities. With a York Innovation funded grant, Professor Mykitiuk is working with colleagues in nursing and in digital media to devise a cell phone resource to support the communication and accommodation needs of students with disabilities and instructors in clinical placements. And as part of a New Frontiers in Research Fund, supporting research on Zero-Gravity 3D Bioprinting of Super-Soft Materials, she is combining her interests in the regulation of embodiment, health law and new technologies to better understand how to regulate in this new area of research and development. Under an NSERC CREATE grant, she is contributing to a collaborative project on artificial intelligence in aerospace engineering, with her contribution focussing on equity, diversity and inclusion issues presently and potentially engaged in the area.

Research Interests: Disability Law, critical disability studies, feminist legal studies, law and embodiment, genetic and reproductive technologies, critical science and technology studies and law, health law, family law, reproductive health law.

Gilmour, Joan M.

Professor Gilmour joined Osgoode Hall Law School’s faculty in 1990, after practising civil litigation and administrative law.  She teaches Health Law, Legal Governance of Health Care, Torts, and Disability and the Law in the JD program. She developed and is the founding Director of Osgoode’s part-time LLM program specializing in Health Law, and teaches graduate courses on Professional Governance, and Legal Frameworks of the Canadian Healthcare System.  She is past Director of Osgoode’s Institute for Feminist Legal Studies, and past Acting and Associate Director of York University’s Centre for Health Studies. Professor Gilmour’s research and publications in health law span some of the most debated issues in contemporary society.  She completed a major study on the effects of tort law (negligence) on efforts to improve patient safety and reduce medical error.  Other research projects include an examination of the legal and ethical issues in decision-making about health care for children, and a study of the interrelationship of disability, gender, law and inequality.  She served as a member of the Expert Panel convened by the Council of Canadian Academies on medical assistance in dying, has acted as a consultant to Health Canada, and completed a study for the Ontario Law Reform Commission on assisted suicide, euthanasia, and foregoing life-sustaining treatment.  She has also completed studies on health care restructuring and privatization, professional regulation of complementary and alternative medicine, and the interrelation of poverty, health and access to justice.