School of Law

Staff

Biography
Sara Ramshaw obtained both her LLB and LLM from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. She clerked at the Ontario Court of Justice (General Division) in 1998-9 and was called to the Bar of the Law Society of Upper Canada in 2000. She then worked as a Research Lawyer at the Superior Court of Justice, Family Court in Ontario before commencing postgraduate studies at Birkbeck School of Law, University of London, England, where she was also employed as a Sessional Lecturer of the Law of Obligations I (Contract Law). Her doctoral thesis, completed in 2007, examined the legal regulation of jazz musicians in New York City (1940-1967) through the lens of poststructural theory informed by feminism, race theory and musicology. Sara is also a member of the Forum for Law and Philosophy and the QUB Gender Research Forum.

Teaching

Undergraduate:

• Contract Law
• Law and Philosophy
• Family Law

• Jurisprudence

Research

Legal Theory, especially Postructuralism, Feminism and Critical Race Theory; Legal History; Law and Music.

Selected Publications

“Deconstructin(g) Jazz Improvisation: Derrida and the Law of the Singular Event” (2006) 2:1 Critical Studies in Improvisation. View

Review of Jim Phillips and Rosemary Gartner, Murdering Holiness: The Trials of Franz Creffield and George Mitchell (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2003) (2005) 23:2 Law and History Review 490.

“‘He's my man!': Lyrics of Innocence and Betrayal in The People v. Billie Holiday ” (2004) 16:1 Canadian Journal of Women and the Law (Special Issue in Memory of Marlee Kline) 86.

“Nearing the ‘Wild Heart': The Cixousian ‘Feminine' and the Quest for Law's Origin” in Sundhya Pahuja and Jennifer Beard, eds., Divining the Source: Law's Foundation and the Question of Authority (Brisbane: Griffith University Press, 2004) (originally published in (2003) 19 Australian Feminist Law Journal 11).

(With W. Wesley Pue) “Feminism Unqualified: Margaret Thornton's, Dissonance and Distrust: Women in the Legal Profession ” (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1996) (review essay) (1997) 15:1 Law in Context 166.