Photo of Doris E. Buss

Doris E. Buss

Professor

Degrees:B.A. (Carleton), LL.B. (Dalhousie), LL.M. (British Columbia)
Phone:613-520-2600 x. 8011
Email:doris.buss@carleton.ca
Office:D486 Loeb
CV:View

Area of Interests

Gender and global governance; Gender, sexuality, and violence in the constitution of legal orders; Transnational governance dimensions of mining and resource extraction; Rural mining livelihoods and gender in sub-Saharan Africa; gender and epistemology.

Current Research Projects

1. Gender and Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining (Kenya, Sierra Leone and Mozambique): 2014–2021 (for more information and copies of publications: https://carleton.ca/africanstudies/research/artisanal-mining-and-gender-in-sub-saharan-africa-exploitation-miniere-artisanale-et-le-genre/)

Working with partners in Canada and Africa, Carleton Professor Blair Rutherford and I have been studying the gendered dimensions of artisanal and small-scale gold mining in these three countries as well as the gendered context of global resource governance (in one project) and in the second, connecting the research results with mining communities, national and transnational organizations and governments working on gender and resource governance.

2.Gender and Global Governance: Beyond Co-optation and Confrontation” (with Shireen Hassim, Pablo Heidrich, Laura Macdonald, Lisa Mills, Blair Rutherford, and Ania Zbyszewska), Faculty of Public Affairs Research Team competition winner.

This explores questions about how, and with what effects, gender is taken up in resource governance and trade policy regimes, what understandings infuse ‘gender equality’ in selected sites, and whether the discourse of gender inclusion enables alternatives to mainstream economic models and conceptions of gender, labour and human rights, and if so, in what ways?

Graduate Supervisions

I am currently accepting graduate students working in the areas of: gender, critical and queer approaches to international law and politics; transnational law and global governance; law and development; law and Africa; armed conflict and gendered insecurity; global resource governance; feminist politics and sexual and gender-based violence.

Graduate students (current and recent)

Doctoral:

Student name Project Degree
Janoff Queer Diplomacy: Homophobia, Human Rights and International Affairs PhD Canadian Studies, committee member (in progress)
Tan Child Soldiers PhD Legal Studies (Committee Member) in progress
Hoogendam Reacting to the Rise in Accountability Requirements: A Case Study of Status of Women Canada’s Women’s Program PhD, Public Policy (Committee Member), in progress
Bromwich Re:Reading Ashley: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Figures of Ashley as Girl in the Smith Case PhD Legal Studies, with distinction; Senate Medal winner, committee member.2015

Masters:

Student name Project Degree
Sriyanchita Srinivasan Women’s political protest, Manipur, India MA Legal Studies, Thesis, supervisor, current
Sarah Kamba Conflict to Peace: The Turn Towards Peacebuilding in Natural Resource Management and the Role of Supply Chain Certification MA Legal Studies, 2019, Research Essay, supervisor
Nathan Taylor A challenge to the discourse of development or development done differently: The discourse of experts in the WTO Agreement on Trade Facilitation MA Political Economy, Thesis, Supervisor 2018
Danielle Mihok “Governing at a Distance” Exploring the U.S. Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Action Section 1502 through the lens of Tania Murray Li MA Legal Studies, Research Essay, Supervisor 2017
Margaret Coligan Legal Consciousness and Reporting Rape: An analysis of media responses to the allegations against Jian Ghomeshi, MA Legal Studies, Research Essay, Supervisor 2015
Ida Dei The Difference Between ‘Us and Them’, ‘Here and There’: The use of language in the international discourse on the Anti-homosexuality Bill MA Legal Studies, Research Essay, Supervisor 2013
Hayley Flett Are Refugees ‘Disappearing’? An analysis of exclusion technologies used in the Tamil Immigration and Refugee Board Decisions in Canada MA Legal Studies, Thesis (with distinction), supervisor 2012

Selected Recent Publications

Forthcoming “Gender and Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining; Implications for Formalization”, Extractive Industries and Society, in production

Forthcoming (second author, with Blair Rutherford) “Gendered Governance and Socio-Economic Differentiation among Women Artisanal and Small-Scale Miners in Central and East Africa”, Third World Thematics: A TWQ Journal, 4:1, 63-79, (DOI 10.1080/23802014.2019.1646614)

2020. (with Blair Rutherford, Cynthia Kumah, Mary Spear). “Beyond the Rituals of Inclusion: The Environment for Women and Resource Governance in Africa’s Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining Sector”, Environmental Science and Policy, 116: 30-37,(https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2020.10.019)

2020. (with Sarah Katz-Lavigne, Aluoka Otieno, Eileen Alma), “Remember the Women of Osiri”: Women and Gender in Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining in Migori County, Kenya”, 54(1) Canadian Journal of African Studies 177-195 (DOI 10.1080/00083968.2019.1677483).

2020. (with Blair Rutherford) “Gendering Women’s Livelihoods in Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining: An Introduction”, 54(1) Canadian Journal of African Studies 1-16

2020. (with Diana Majury) “Shadow Matters: Campus Sexual Violence and Legal Forms”, in Violence, Interrupted: Sexual Violence on University Campuses, 243-262. Diane Crocker, Joanne Minaker, and Amanda Nelund, eds. McGill-Queens University Press.

m completing a multi-year study of identity and international war crimes tribunals. My research examines how international war crimes prosecutions produce ‘legal knowledge’ about the origins and nature of large-scale violence, the meaning of racial and ethnic identity, and the impact of sexual violence crimes. I am interested in how international criminal law draws on various expert knowledges – from anthropology to sociology and history – to generate legal determinations about large scale violence. This part of my research focuses specifically on the Rwanda Tribunal and what I term ‘the politics’ of judging Rwandan history. My research and teaching generally could be characterised as interested in identity and international law. My previous work considered how social movements coalesced around the promotion of, or opposition to, women’s human rights, including sexual and reproductive rights.I am currently working (with Joanne Lebert, Blair Rutherford, Donna Sharkey, and Obi Aginam) on a project entitled Sexual Violence and Conflict in Africa. This international workshop was held at Carleton University in May 2010, the papers from which will be published in an edited volume by the United Nations University Press in 2012. For more information on this project, see: http://carleton.ca/africanstudies/sexual-violence-and-conflict-in-africa-workshop/