Feminist Legal Studies Queen's
Winter Term 2026 Lectures
Monday, January 19, 2026
1-2:20 pm
In-person only event
Register here
Nadeen Awad | Articling Student, Savards LLP
Zinaida Miller | Professor of Law & International Affairs, Northeastern University
Lisa Kelly | Associate Professor, Queen's Law
Topic: The Children of Genocide
Abstract:
This talk brings social reproduction theory to bear on genocide. Drawing on scholarship that understands genocide not as a single catastrophic event but as a process unfolding over time, we examine how efforts to destroy a group operate through sustained attacks on the conditions and labour that make possible the reproduction of life, culture, and community. Placing children and childrearing at the centre, the speakers show how the targeting of education, family life, language, and land has functioned as a core mechanism of attempted group destruction in both the Israeli genocide against Palestinians and the Canadian genocide against Indigenous peoples. Drawing on Mai Taha’s concept of “insurgent social reproduction,” the talk also highlights how everyday practices of care, domestic labour, and nurturing life—especially under conditions of occupation—can become acts of political resistance and struggle against colonial and genocidal violence.
Bios:
Nadeen Awad is a recent graduate of Queen’s University, Faculty of Law (Class of 2025). Nadeen is currently articling at a prominent criminal defence firm in Toronto, where she is developing her advocacy skills and gaining experience in delivering compassionate, client-focused legal services.
Throughout her studies, Nadeen explored the intersections between criminal justice and international legal frameworks, particularly how law can serve as a mechanism for protection and social justice. During law school, Nadeen organized multiple speaker panels featuring leading legal scholars and experts in international law. She also served as a Student Caseworker at the Queen’s Prison Law Clinic, providing legal services to a vulnerable population. Beyond her academic work, she has volunteered with organizations that support refugees and immigrants, assisting newcomers as they navigate the legal and social challenges of resettlement.
Driven by a commitment to advancing human rights and social justice, Nadeen aims to build a career that bridges criminal and international law, advocating for systemic justice, accountability, and meaningful reform.
Professor Zinaida Miller holds a joint appointment in the School of Law and the International Affairs Program of the College of Social Sciences and Humanities. She teaches courses in human rights law and in criminal justice. Along with Professor Martha Davis, she is a founding faculty co-director of the Center for Global Law & Justice.
An expert in transitional justice and international human rights, Miller’s research focuses on inequality, structural violence, and critical approaches to international law, including in Palestine/Israel, South Africa, and Rwanda. Her scholarship has been published in journals including the Columbia Human Rights Law Review, International Journal of Transitional Justice, Transnational Legal Theory, Cornell International Law Journal, and International Criminal Law Review and in edited collections including the forthcoming Race and Transitional Justice (Oxford Univ. Press) and The Oxford Handbook of Transitional Justice (Oxford Univ. Press, 2025). She is co-editor of Anti-Impunity and the Human Rights Agenda (Cambridge University Press, 2016), which explores the emphasis on punishment and prosecution in the human rights movement, particularly in states emerging from conflict. Her current scholarship investigates the relationships among temporality, rights, and justice, including the uses of the past in legal and political struggles over racial and economic inequalities.
Prior to joining Northeastern, Miller was Associate Professor of International Law and Human Rights at Seton Hall University’s School of Diplomacy and International Relations, where she taught courses in public international law, international criminal law, race and international law, and human rights. She previously held a post-doctoral fellowship in global governance, funded by the Erin Jellel Collins Arsenault Trust, at McGill University’s Institute for the Study of International Development.
Miller was co-chair of the American Society of International Law’s Transitional Justice and Rule of Law Interest Group from 2017 to 2020. She currently serves on the Advisory Council of Harvard Law School’s Institute for Global Law & Policy and as a faculty member of the IGLP Global Scholars Academy. Miller received her AB from Brown University, JD from Harvard Law School and her MALD and PhD in International Relations from The Fletcher School at Tufts University.
Lisa M. Kelly is an Associate Professor at Queen’s University, Faculty of Law, where she teaches criminal law, evidence, criminal procedure, and sexual and reproductive justice. She studied history and political science at the University of British Columbia (B.A) and is a graduate of the University of Toronto, Faculty of Law (J.D.) and Harvard Law School (S.J.D.), where she was a Trudeau Scholar. Kelly’s doctoral dissertation – Governing the Child: Parental Authority, State Power, and the School in North America – analyzed legal struggles over race and school discipline from the late-nineteenth century through the present. Before joining Queen’s, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia Law School and the Center for Reproductive Rights in New York City. She previously served as a law clerk to Justice Marshall E. Rothstein of the Supreme Court of Canada. Kelly has been a Fulbright Scholar, a Frank Knox Memorial Fellow, and a Fellow of the Institute for Global Law and Policy at Harvard Law School.
In 2018, she received the Stanley M. Corbett Award for Teaching Excellence.
Background readings:
Zinaida Miller, “Temporary Measures” London Review of Books (19 November 2025).
Mai Taha, “Insurgent Social Reproduction: The Home, the Barricade and Women’s Work in the 1936 Palestinian Revolution” (2025) 42:4 Theory, Culture & Society 101.
Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, “Unchilding and the Killing Boxes” (2021) 23:3 Journal of Genocide Research 490.
National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, Reclaiming Power and Place: The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls: Supplementary Report: Genocide (Ottawa: Privy Council Office, 2019) at 12-19.