Ashleigh Keall

PhD candidate and Teaching Fellow

PhD title: Conceptions of harm in the Canadian constitutional adjudication of religion
Education: LLB (University of British Columbia, 2008); BA Hons in Psychology & English Literature (University of Ottawa, 2002)
Email: a.keall.12@ucl.ac.uk

Ashleigh Keall joined the Faculty of Laws as an MPhil/PhD candidate in October 2012 and is doing research on a part-time basis in the area of law and religion. Her research examines how courts understand and apply the concept of harm in constitutional decisions on religious freedom in Canada, considered from a feminist perspective. She is the recipient of both a Faculty of Laws Research Scholarship and a doctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada).

Ashleigh served as a law clerk to the Honourable Justice Louis LeBel of the Supreme Court of Canada in 2008-09 and qualified as a solicitor and barrister in the province of Ontario in 2009. After moving to London, Ashleigh worked on housing case files at a legal aid clinic and was a research assistant in the Public Law team of the Law Commission of England and Wales.

Ashleigh was a Teaching Fellow on the Property II course, Equity and Trusts (2016-17) and served as graduate student representative in Laws (2013-14).

Research supervisors: Ronan McCrea and Alison Diduck 

Research interests: Law and religion, constitutional law, feminist legal theory, equity and trusts, legal education

UCL associations/academic and professional memberships: Society of Legal Scholars, UK Constitutional Law Group, Canadian Law and Society Association

Conferences and Academic Engagement: 

• Osgoode Hall Law School Visiting Research Program (2018)
• Catolica Graduate Legal Research Conference, Lisbon (2016): presented the paper 'Balancing Harms: Muslim Veiling and the Proportionate Protection of Religious Freedom in Canada' and was interviewed by a leading national newspaper
• Co-convened the UCL Laws Postgraduate and Early Career Academic Conference, 'Creative Constraints' (2014)
• University of Edinburgh Legal Theory Festival (2014): co-convened a chaired a workshop on Feminist Judging and Constitutional Theory
• University of Edinburgh Graduate Student Conference (2013): presented the paper 'Expressive Harm in the Constitutional Adjudication of Religion' which was awarded the prize for Best Paper

Current Teaching: Laws' Connections, Property I