Education
PhD, University of Alberta
Research interests
Dr. Swiffen’s background is in socio-legal studies and sociological theory. Her areas of expertise include social and political theory, Constitutional law, Aboriginal law, criminology, biopolitics, and psychoanalysis. Her research is focused on the relationship between law and society in new legal contexts, such as public health and indigenous governance. Dr. Swiffen’s book Law, Ethics and the Biopolitical (Routledge 2011) analyses the emergence of a new paradigm in ethical thought known as bioethics from the perspective biopolitical theories of law. She has co-edited two collections of essays, one on the end of history (Routledge 2013) and another (forthcoming) on legal violence. Her research has been published in a variety of refereed journals, including Law and Critique, Law, Culture and the Humanities, Theory and Event, American Ethnologist, International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, and Legal and Political Anthropology Review. She is currently engaged in two research projects, one on HIV criminalization in Canada and the other on the possibilities for indigenous self-governance within Canada's constitutional framework of Aboriginal rights.
