Biodata

Dr. Irehobhude O. Iyioha ('Ireh Iyioha'), LL.B. (Hons), BL, LL.M., Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Victoria, a Full Professor, Adj. at the John Dossetor Centre for Health Ethics, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Alberta, and a professor at the Osgoode Hall Law School Professional Master of Laws (LL.M.) Program at York University. She has taught at the Faculties of Law at Western University, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Alberta, Canada. She has served as a Nathanson Visiting Fellow at the Jack and Mae Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security at Osgoode Hall Law School, Visiting Scholar at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, and Visiting Academic at the University of Alberta. She was appointed a Visiting Scholar in Philosophy at Harvard University for the 2023 spring semester (January 1 – June 30, 2023), and now continues her work as an Associate of the Department, starting July 1, 2023.

Dr. Iyioha’s scholarship focuses on the limits and effectiveness of law in the fields of moral and legal philosophy, international human rights law, feminist legal theory, torts, comparative health law, and women’s health law and policy. In these areas, her work has advanced understanding of why law works and why it fails in various legal, social and geopolitical contexts. She is editor and co-editor of two books – Women's Health and the Limits of Law: Domestic and International Perspectives , 1st Edition (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2020) and Comparative Health Law and Policy: Critical Perspectives on Nigerian and Global Health Law (London: Ashgate, 2015) (with R. N. Nwabueze), and is currently working on a third book on the moral limits of pandemic law. Her publications have appeared and are forthcoming in edited collections and leading Canadian and international law journals, including Oxford University’s Statute Law Review, Canadian Journal of Law and Society (Cambridge University), Dalhousie Law Journal, Edinburgh University’s African Journal of International and Comparative Law and York University’s Transnational Human Rights Review.

Dr. Iyioha’s scholarship and service to the local and global communities have been recognized nationally and internationally through numerous awards and honours, including the World Congress on Medical Law Award issued by the World Association for Medical Law for her formative work on legal effectiveness, and the Canadian Association of Law Teachers (CALT) Award for Scholarly Work that Makes a Substantial Contribution to Legal Literature for her theory of Substantive (Legal) Effectiveness. She was honoured with a Top 40 under 40 in Edmonton Award by Avenue Magazine for “writing and teaching law with an unflinching commitment to human rights,” and received the Stars of Alberta Award from the Queen’s Representative, the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta and the Minister of Culture and Tourism for exemplary leadership in service and improving the overall quality of life of Albertans and the community. In December 2022, she received a $690,000 Racial Justice Grant from the Law Foundation of British Columbia to support her educational start-up—UVic’s Black Professionals Leadership Program (BPL)​​—an educational support and leadership training program for Black students at the University of Victoria.

She is a 2021 Recipient of a Canadian Bar Association (CBA) Law for the Future Fund Grant (LFFF) to study inequality and the limits of pandemic law and policy, and currently holds a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Development Grant for a multi-country study of populism and obedience to law in the context of public health restrictions—which forms the focus of her work at Harvard. Dr. Iyioha is hosted by Dr. Tommie Shelby—Caldwell Titcomb Professor of African and African American Studies and of Philosophy—whose work advances the discourse on the necessity for a just social order, the implications of such an order for obedience to law, and the idea of compliance based on reciprocity rather than a fear of sanctions.

Websites:

• Faculty Profile: https://www.uvic.ca/law/facultystaff/facultydirectory/iyioha.php 
• Personal Website: https://www.irehiyioha.com

Education

• Ph.D., University of British Columbia
• LL.M., University of Toronto
• BL, Nigerian Law School
• LL.B. (Hons), University of Benin (Highest Honours)
• Certificate of Qualification, National Committee on Accreditation, Federation of Law Societies of Canada
• Post-Doctoral Fellow, University of Western Ontario