Let’s Talk Research

• In-person event
• D492, Loeb Building, Carleton University
• 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6

The fifth edition of the Let’s Talk Research Colloquium Series will be taking place on February 15th, 2018. The speakers are PhD candidate Meral Tan, and PhD candidate Anita Grace. For more information on the talk, please see below. If you are interested in attending and are not a member of the Department of Law & Legal Studies, please email us at: Law@carleton.ca

Meral Tan: Omar Khadr: An ‘Unpopular’ Citizen of Canada

What does it mean to be excluded from citizenship? How do states make and un-make their citizens? This paper will try to address these questions by analyzing the complex relation between Omar Khadr, a former child soldier and Guantanamo inmate, and Canada. At the age of fifteen, Khadr was captured by the US soldiers in an Al-Qaeda compound in Afghanistan and was sent to Guantanamo, where he would spend ten years as an enemy combatant. He was repatriated in 2012, and his case was recently settled with a government apology but public discussions continue as to how previous and current governments should have acted. I will discuss Khadr’s expulsion from citizenship and his re-inclusion through an analysis of the sovereign narratives and the ‘child soldier’ discourse.

Anita Grace: “They treated me like a criminal”: Experiences of women charged with domestic violence

Since 2001, police in Ontario are obligated to lay charges when responding to incidents of domestic violence. This obligation was intended to protect victims, the majority of whom are female. However, there is growing evidence that women are increasingly being charged with partner assault, especially women who contradict stereotypes of female ‘victims’, and/or those already marginalized and stigmatized though poverty and race. Drawing from interviews conducted with women who have been charged in situations of domestic violence, this research contributes to efforts to empirically consider the implications of women’s arrests for intimate partner violence. In particular, this study examines women’s accounts of how police responded to them during the incident for which they were charged. Women describe being unsupported and disbelieved by police, being deemed and treated inhumanely, and ultimately left feeling more vulnerable and alone through a process that was ostensibly designed to protect them