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Professor Mary J. Shariff, PhD

19th April 2019

is an Associate Professor of Law at Robson Hall, Faculty of Law, University of Manitoba, Canada. Professor Shariff received her PhD from Trinity College, Dublin. In addition to teaching the Law of Contracts in the first year of the JD program, she teaches the upper year courses Animals and the Law and Law and Bioethics in the JD program as well as Natural Resources Administration and the Law to Masters and PhD students at the Natural Resources Institute an Interdisciplinary program at the University of Manitoba aimed at “developing holistic perspectives” on environmental and natural resources management problems.  She also acts in a supervisory capacity for graduate students completing masters and PhD theses. Thesis supervisions have included research related to climate change and non-human (animal) rights. She is published in the areas of assisted death and animal law and is frequently engaged as a speaker on these topics. As a past Associate Dean of both the JD Program and Research and Graduate Studies within the Faculty of Law at the University of Manitoba, Professor Shariff is currently focusing on her research in law and bioethics, death and dying, environment, animals and legal strategies. As an extension and integration of these lines of research she is presently examining animal responses to nuclear incidents (whether accidental or by design) through the concept of “legal irony” drawing methodological inspiration from the work of American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr.