Our Mandate

The Transnational Law and Racial Justice Network (TLRJN) is a research, advocacy and networking consortium housed at Windsor Law.  Using law as our main tool, we research, teach and work with communities in pursuit of social justice. Our work is transnational in several respects.

First, we are concerned with the ways in which Canadian laws regulate the lives of those who cross national borders. Migrant workers and immigration law are of particular interest to us.

Second, we explore how borders shape the pursuit of social justice by enabling some legal outcomes and inhibiting others. Transnational environmental advocacy offers a good example.

Third, we engage in participatory action research outside Canada. Our work has taken us to diverse areas such as Sri Lanka, Detroit, Brazil and Palestine. 

Fourth, we are interested in social justice issues that cross borders and unite people regardless of the jurisdictions in which they live.  We ask questions like how does law facilitate or inhibit solidarities across borders? And, how can we learn from experiences beyond our own borders? Examples include projects focused on transnational judicial education as well as Anti-Black Racism.

Fifth, we are interested in international and regional laws and institutions, especially from TWAIL (third world approaches to international law) perspectives. 

Finally, we explore key concepts in transnational legal practice. Examples include transitional justice and human dignity. 

Our goal is to advance social justice through law though we are aware that law has been used to discipline and oppress people. Our inspirations are drawn from legal theories that recognize law’s contradictions. Critical race theory, critical race feminism, critical pedagogy, TWAIL, post-colonial theory and interdisciplinarity are particularly important to us. We aim to be responsive to the world around us and to engage in both theorizing about law and selectively harnessing law to achieve just outcomes.

Each year, we organize The Boundaries, Borders and Intersections speakers’ series to highlight pressing but under-explored developments in law and legal practice. In addition, we organize an annual conference that identifies and contributes answers to unresolved transnational law and social justice issues. TLRJN also creates and curates public education resources around pressing social justice issues. In 2020, we began the Anti-Black Racism project to highlight resources relevant and useful to the struggle for equality and liberation, with a special emphasis on North America. Our members occasionally become involved in key, high impact litigation and we participate in the creation of public education materials and opportunities.

TLRJN recognizes that the University of Windsor sits on the traditional territory of the Three Fires Confederacy, comprised of the Ojibway, the Odawa, and the Potawatomi. We call for truth and reconciliation with all Indigenous communities across Turtle Island.  

People

TLRJN is comprised of Windsor Law faculty, students and staff.  The TLRJN Director is appointed for two years to guide our activities.  The TLRJN Board sets strategic directions. Windsor Law faculty affiliates collaborate on projects and offer suggestions on global issues in the spirit of solidarity. TLRJN student fellows are actively involved in all aspects of TLRJN’s work from website development to litigation, the creation of public education tools and working directly with community based organizations. We are grateful for the support provided by Windsor Law staff. Through our activities, we have established a growing global network of scholars who share our approach to teaching, pedagogy and research.  

Board Members – 2022/2023

Sujith Xavier – Director, Associate Professor


Danardo Jones– Assistant Professor


Vasanthi Venkatesh – Associate Professor

Click here to see our past board members.

Windsor Law Faculty Affiliates

TLRJN is home to a number of local, national and international experts whose scholarship translates theory into practice in their respective communities and primarily focuses on the intersection of local/global. A highlight of Windsor Law’s faculty research can be found here.

TLRJN Fellows – 2022/2023

Senior Fellow

Fabia Fernandes Carvalho
Fabia’s research projects are focused on the concrete ways international law has been articulated in Latin America. She is interested in how the international legal vocabulary has shaped issues of social justice in the region, as well as the persistence of ideas like “racial democracy” relating to the legacy of Portuguese colonialism in Brazil.

Before joining the TLRJN, Fabia was a postdoctoral fellow with the Laureate Program in International Law at Melbourne Law School and, previously, an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Federal University of São Paulo. Her research and teaching interests are focused on regionalism, Latin America in both historical and current perspectives, transitional justice and international human rights law, and TWAIL. Fabia earned her LL.B. and LLM from the University of São Paulo Law School. She completed her doctorate in international law at the University of São Paulo Law School, examining the case law of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights related to amnesties, and was a Doctoral Visiting Research Fellow at the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights at the University of Helsinki.

Ali Hammoudi
Ali Hammoudi is an Ianni Fellow and a Lecturer in Constitutional Law at the University of Windsor Faculty of Law. Ali was previously a Postdoctoral Fellow at the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law. Ali earned his LLM from the University of Leeds School of Law, and his PhD from Osgoode Hall Law School. 

He has held various roles throughout his legal career, including with the Ontario Human Rights Commission, a criminal defense firm, and several poverty legal clinics. Ali’s research interests include the history of international law, especially in relation to the Middle East & Iraq in particular; Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL); Law & Empire; Labour law & social movements; Oil decolonization & sovereignty over natural resources; and Marxist legal theory. 

He is currently working on a book manuscript for Hart Publishing entitled, The Geopolitics of Sovereignty: Law and Labour Struggle in ‘Independent’ Iraq.

Graduate Fellows

Saranga Ugalmugle
Saranga Ugalmugle is a social justice and social movement advocate with over five years of experience in India. She has worked on matters pertaining to women’s rights, children’s rights, minority rights, labor rights, and environmental justice among others in India. She is a legal researcher who has also been associated with socio-political and civil liberties groups over the years. She has been part of fact-finding committees to Kashmir. Saranga is interested in questions of law, society, and its relationship with violence.In 2021, she completed her graduate studies in Law and Development at the Azim Premji University, Bangalore. She completed her LL.B. at ILS Law College, Pune, India in 2016. Saranga is currently pursuing her LLM with a Certificate in University Teaching and Learning at the University of Windsor. She is currently a graduate fellow of the TLRJN and serves as the editorial assistant to the TWAILR editorial collective.

Shubham Kumar
Shubham Kumar is a Master of Laws (LLM) student at the University of Windsor. He completed his LL.B. from National Law University, Lucknow, India. He is one of the TLRJN Graduate Fellows for this year.

Before pursuing LLM, Shubham was working as the Legal Consultant to the Department of Justice, Government of India. In the year 2019-20, he secured the prestigious LAMP Fellowship (Legislative Assistant to Member of Parliament) whereby he assisted Members of Parliament in India in their work. He has also assisted Dr. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, Chief Justice of India, and Justice Rajan Roy, Judge, Allhabad High Court in their judicial research. His main areas of interest include constitutional law, anti-discrimination law, social justice, affirmative action, legal history, and legal profession.Shubham is also an avid reader and frequently writes for reputed forums such as Economic and Political Weekly, Livelaw, Outlook, etc. on policy and legal issues.

JD Fellows

Nina Jabbari
Nina is a second-year law student at the University of Windsor Law working this year with the TLRJN. In addition to her work for TLRJN, she was involved with the Windsor community as a caseworker at Community Legal Aid clinic. This year she will also be joining the Windsor Law Women and Law club as an incoming White Ribbon Chair, where she will organize events aimed at advocacy and promotion of equality rights of Canadian women. As a 1L mentor, Nina continues to be passionate about ways to support her community and finding ways to make the legal field more accessible. 

Daniel Perez
Daniel is a 2L student at the University of Windsor Faculty of Law and a J.D. Fellow with the TLRJN. Born in Mexico, he immigrated to Canada with his parents at the age of 6 and speaks Spanish and English. He holds a BSc. (Honours) in Human Biology from the University of Toronto and since transitioning to studies in law he has developed a passion for both international and domestic social justice. The University of Windsor has awarded Daniel a Social Justice Fellowship for the 2023 summer, through which he will work alongside non-profit groups advocating for and providing legal services to migrant workers in Ontario. Daniel, through his work for the TLRJN and beyond seeks to channel his lived experience and his legal studies to work on behalf of vulnerable people who don’t have the means or experience to navigate an often hostile legal system by themselves.

Click here to see our past student fellows.

Global Network
TLRJN is grateful to the following people for their participation in our activities:
A-B

Sandy Abadir
Maha AbdelAzim
Mohamed Abdelsalam
Georges Abi-Saab
Noha Aboueldahab
Hesham Abozeid
Paola Acosta-Alvarado
Fatima Ahmed
Hassan Ahmad
Nadia Ahmad
Richard Albert
Raquel Aldana
Jerusa Ali
Jean Allain
Amaya Alvez
Masa Amir
Paolo Amorosa
Natalia Angel-Cabo
Tony Anghie
Bridget Anderson
Maria Aristodemou
Courtney Arseneau
Donna Ashamock
Ibrahim Awad
Maysa Ayoub
Valentina Azarova

Rémi Bachand
Nesrine Badawi
Cecilia Bailliet
Clayton Bangsund
Maria Bargh
Ignacio Forcada Barona
Jose Manuel Barrreto
Jason Beckett
Marwa Beitalmal
Clarisa Bencomo
Stephanie Ben-Ishai
Amaya Betancur-Restrepo
Khaled A. Beydoun
Faisal Bhabha
Amar Bhatia
Lisa Bhungalia
Annie Bird
Muin Boase
John Borrows
Lindsay Borrows
Andrée Boisselle
Tamara Buckworld
Sarah Buhler
Michelle Burgis-Kasthala
Srinivas Burra

C-D

Fathima Cader
Marsha Cadogan
Antonio Calcagno
Shannon Callahan
Fabia Fernandes Carbalho-Vecoso
Sue Chiblow
Cyra Akila Choudhury
Aziz Choudry
Aimée Craft
Matthew Craven
Ronald Cuming
John Cutfeet

Vargha Dana
Emad Daoud
Julia Dehm
James Devine
Luwam Dirar
Karen Drake
Enakshi Dua

E-F

Angelique EagleWoman
Ahmed Ebada
Mary Eberts
Jihan El Alaily
Sally Elfishawy
Habiba El-Kharbotly
Ahmed Hishan El-Sheikh
Joanna Erdman
Luis Eslava

Michael Fakhri
Jordan Falk
Yusuf Faqiri 
Cynthia Farid
Anthony Fenton
Alexandra Flynn
Mirielle Fournier
Claiton Fyock

G-H

Mohammed Galal
George Galindo
Manimuthu Gandhi
Kristi Leora Gansworth
Benjamin Geva
Christopher Gevers
Ahmed Gamal Abdel Ghany
Nimmi Gowrinathan
Yugank Goyal
Gustavo Gozzi
Priya Gupta

Adham Hamdy
Mohammad Hamdy
Ali Hammoudi
Vanja Hamzić
Jackie Hansen
Mark Harris
Sara Hassan
Walid Hejazi
Gail Henderson
Jacqueline P. Hand
Sam Holder
Syeda Re’em Hussein

I-J

Farida Ibrahim
Fatma Ibrahim
Maureen Irish

K’èdukà Jack
Barbara Jackman
Maja Janmyr
Yvonne Johnson
Satvinder Juss

K-L

Atif Kabursi
Ioannis Kalpouzos
Sylvia Kang’ara
Azeezah Kanji
Vik Kanwar
Mudar Kassis
Despina Katsaros
Adil Khan
Mohamed Khimji
Kishan Khoday
Asad Kiyani
Robert Knox
Freya Kodar
Tor Krever
Vidya Kumar

Darryl Li 
Darcy Lindberg
Georgia Lloyd-Smith
Anna Lund

M-N

Anne-Charlotte Martineau
Peggy Mason
Mazen Masri 
Emily Matheisen
Nombuso Mathibela
Heidi Matthews
Tyler McCreary
Deborah McGregor
Zina Miller
Terry Mitchell
Mariam Miranda
Noha Morsi
Muhammad Ahmed Mousa
Jasmine Moussa

Russell Nahdee
Tom Najem
Shannu Narayan
Youssef Nassar
Usha Natarajan 
Hadayt Nazami
Vasuki Nesiah
Nicole Nussbaum

O-P

Liliana Obregón
Lama Abu Odeh
Olanike Odewale
Obiora Chinedu Okafor
Zoran Oklopcic
Assis da Costa Oliveira
Veronica Overlid
Jose Aylwin Oyarzun

Sundhya Pahuja
Genevieve Painter
Rose Parfitt
Gianluca Parolin
John Pottow
Enrique Prieto-Rios

Q-R

Joanna R. Quinn

John Reynolds
Thays Ricarte
Daniel Rivas-Ramirez
Emily Rosser

S-T

Hussein Salama
Youssef Sallam
Salwa Salman
Abouelfetouh Sammak
Nahed Samour
German Sandoval
Hani Sayed
Christine Schwobel-Patel
Dayna Nadine Scott
Kalana Senaratne
Rayanna Seymour-Hourie
Sayed Shaarawy
Ayesha Shahid
Amr Shalakany
Nizammudin Ahmed Siddiqui
Ximena Sierra
Prabhakar Singh
Thomas Skouteris
Joseph Slaughter
Nevine Soliman
Isabel Solis
Adrian Smith
Gavin Smith
Paul Simard Smith 
Shawna Smith
Rahma Gamil A. Soliman
Ahila Sornarajah
Muthucumaraswamy Sornarajah
Estella Labardi de Souza
Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark
Allyson Stevenson
Ramaswamy Sudarshan

Mai Taha
Heather Teague
Jennifer Terrell
Darren Thomas
Robinson Torres Virginia Torrie
Germán Sandoval Trigo
Patricia Tuitt
Joey Twins

U-V

Basil Ugochukwu
Miguel Angel Urbina

Diana Van Bogaert
Estair Van Wagner
Fabia Vecoso
Sharon Venne
Moisés Moreira Vieira
Sharath Voleti

W-X

Barrington Walker
Mary Wiebusch
Ralph Wilde
Jeremy Wildeman
Kristin Wu

Y-Z

Chen Yifeng

Emily Zell
Wilfried Zoungrana
Peer Zumbansen



Windsor Law Staff

Susan Arnold – Special Events Coordinator

Rachelle Prince – Communications Coordinator