Clara Chapdelaine-Feliciati

Clara Chapdelaine-Feliciati is Assistant Professor in International Law and Graduate Program Director (Interim) of the Glendon School of Public and International Affairs. She is also a faculty member of the York and Ryerson Universities joint Communication and Culture graduate program as well as the School of Public and International Affairs and the Gender, Feminist and Women's Studies program, through the Faculty of Graduate Studies. She holds a Ph.D. in International Law (University of Oxford) in which she examined the rights of girl children under international law, an LL.M. in Human Rights (King’s College, University of London) and bachelors of civil law and common law (B.C.L./LL.B., McGill University). She is a Lawyer (Barrister and Solicitor) with the Law Society of Ontario and a member of the Canadian Bar Association.

She was previously Assistant Professor in the Law and Business Department at Ryerson University, and Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Toronto, where she taught international human rights law. She worked as Child Rights Project Officer at the UNICEF Office of Research in Florence (Italy), within the Implementation of International Standards unit, where she conducted research with the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the OHCHR, governments and the private sector. Prior to this, she directed the Canadian Child Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation Research Study at the International Bureau for Children's Rights. She articled at the International Criminal Court in the Hague (The Netherlands), Office of the Prosecutor, Prosecution division, and clerked at the Court of Quebec, Youth division in Montreal as well as the Tribunal de Bobigny in Paris (France).

Professor Chapdelaine-Feliciati has presented her research in French, English and Italian in leading institutions globally, such as the Oxford University Faculty of Law, the Communication University of China (as Keynote Speaker), McGill University, the Coimbra University Faculty of Law, University of Turin, University of Naples, University of Bari, the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (Bucharest), and the UN, including at the Palais Wilson in Geneva.

She is presently conducting a bilingual (English-French) research study on girl children in the entertainment industry in Ontario and Quebec from a legal semiotics perspective which is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Development Grant (2020-2022).

Recent publications:

Chapdelaine-Feliciati, C. (2018a). Deconstructing the Convention on the Rights of the Child: Semiotics, significs and semioethics of gendercide. Cambridge International Law Journal, 7(1), 29–50.

Chapdelaine-Feliciati, C. (2018b). Feminicides of Girl Children in the Family Context: An International Human Rights Law Approach. BRILL.

Chapdelaine-Feliciati, C. (2020). The semiotic puzzle: Authentic languages & international law. International Journal of Legal Discourse, 5(2), 317–341.