Joshua Shaw

Dissertation Title

Sorting Flesh, Making Waste: A Lawscape of Human Remains

Dissertation Topic

My dissertation should develop legal theory as it conceptualises legal relations that emerge from the “legal status, treatment and disposition of human remains” (Marsh 2015, 1). In particular, I am interested in how law mediates the classification of some human remains as waste and others as non-waste, and the consequences that follow for how those remains are treated. To make sense of how law contributed and contributes to the classification of human remains, I anticipate bringing theoretical literature on law and the body into conversation with legal geography and legal materialism. Legal geography and materialism—supplemented by interdisciplinary literatures—should allow me to critically re-examine property law, health law and other discrete doctrinal areas which are traditionally used to comment on the legal significance of human remains. I also hope components of this project will assist me with my general research interests in assessing the place of the body—in this case, human remains—in what I see as more-than-human forms of law and theory.

Education

Master of Laws - Dalhousie University, 2016

Juris Doctor - University of Manitoba, 2015

Bachelor of Science Honours, Psychology and Biological Sciences - University of Manitoba, 2012

Teaching Experience

Legal Process class (LAW 1300) - Osgoode Hall Law School, York University Team Lecturer : 2020-2021; 2019-2020; 2018-2019.

Professional Experience

Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, Toronto, CA: Health Policy Analyst (May 2017 - August 2019); Student-at-Law (July 2016 - May 2017)

Awards
  • Nathanson Graduate Fellowship, 2019-2020 – PhD, $10,000
  • Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS Program Doctoral Scholarship, 2019-2022 (SSHRC) – PhD, $105,000
  • Ontario Graduate Scholarship, 2019-2020 – PhD, $15,000 (Declined)
  • Honourable William Z Estey Teaching Fellowship in Law, 2019-2020 – PhD
  • Honourable William Z Estey Teaching Fellowship in Law, 2018-2019 – PhD
  • York Graduate Fellowship, 2018-present – PhD
Publications
Peer-reviewed articles
  • Shaw, Joshua David Michael. Transcarceral Lawscapes Enacted in Moments of Aboriginalisation: A Case Study of an Indigenous Woman Released on Urban Parole. International Journal of Law in Context [accepted for publication; forthcoming].
  • Shaw, Joshua David Michael. 2020. Confronting Jurisdiction with Antinomian Bodies. Law, Culture and the Humanities 0(0): 1-26.
  • Shaw, Joshua David Michael. 2020. The Spatio-Legal Production of Bodies Through the Legal Fiction of Death. Law and Critique 0(0): 1-22.
  • Shaw, Joshua David Michael. 2018. Contagion and the Public Body: A Re-Ordering of Private and Public Spheres in R v Gowdy. Windsor Review of Legal and Social Issues 39: 127-165.
  • Shaw, Joshua. 2015. De-Recognition of Disability: Canadian Parens Patriae Jurisdiction and Sterilization of Children. Windsor Review of Legal and Social Issues 36: 147-174.
  • Shaw, Joshua David Michael. 2015. The Queer Child Deserves Protection: Bill 18 and the Justifiable Infringement of Denominational Schools’ Freedom of Religion. Manitoba Law Journal 38: 331-357.
  • Alards-Tomalin, Douglas, Alexander Walker, Joshua D M Shaw, and Launa C Leboe-McGowan. 2015. Is 9 louder than 1? Cross-modal congruency effects between number magnitude and sound loudness. Acta Psychologica 160: 95-103.
  • Alards-Tomalin, Douglas, Jason P Leboe-McGowan, Joshua D M Shaw, and Launa C Leboe-McGowan. 2013. The effects of numerical magnitude, size, and color saturation on perceived interval duration. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 40(2): 555-566.
  • Anastasia Chamberlen. Osgoode Hall Law Journal [accepted for publication; forthcoming in volume 57, issue 2].
  • Shaw, Joshua David Michael. 2020. Emily L Thuma, All Our Trials: Prisons, Policing, and the Feminist Fight to End Violence. Labour: Journal of Canadian Labour Studies/Le Travail: revue d’Études Ouvrières Canadiennes 85: 318-320.
  • Shaw, Joshua David Michael. 2020. Adelina Iftene, Punished for Aging: Vulnerability, Rights, and Access to Justice in Canadian Penitentiaries. Punishment and Society 22(4): 563-565.
  • Shaw, Joshua. 2019. Review of Mario Mieli, Towards a Gay Communism: Elements of Homosexual Critique, trans. David Fernbach and Evan Calder Williams (London: Pluto, 2018 [1977]). Legal Form: A Forum for Marxist Analysis of Law, online.
Presentation
  • Shaw, Joshua David Michael. 2020. The Nomosphericity of Dying: The Spatio-Legal Production of Bodies Through the Legal Definition of Death [Paper]: Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, Denver, US (May 2020)
  • Shaw, Joshua David Michael. 2020. Confronting Jurisdiction with Antinomian Bodies: Death, Burial and Post-Mortem Donative Practices in the Common Law’s Lawscape [Paper]: Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities, New Haven, US (March 2020); Doctoral Forum on Legal Theory, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia (November 2020)
  • Shaw, Joshua David Michael. 2019. Bounded Bodies: Carceral Spatialities of Institutional Transfer and Urban Parole Upon Indigenous Prisoners [Paper]: Royal Geographical Society’s annual meeting, London, UK (August 2019); Canadian Association of Geographers’ annual meeting, Winnipeg, CA (May 2019); University of Toronto’s Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies’ annual graduate student conference, Toronto, CA (March 2019)
  • Shaw, Joshua David Michael. 2019. Spatio-Social Features of Legal Fiction in Defining Death and Managing Bodies at the Bedside [Paper]: Canadian Association of Geographers’ annual meeting, Winnipeg, CA (May 2019)
  • Shaw, Joshua. 2018. Contagion and the Public Body: A Re-Ordering of the Private and Public Spheres in R. v Gowdy [Paper]: University of Toronto’s Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies’ annual graduate student conference, Toronto, CA (March 2018)