Irehobhude O. Iyioha

Dr. Irehobhude O. Iyioha (‘Ireh Iyioha’) is an Associate Professor and the inaugural holder of the UBC Professorship in Race and Access to Justice funded by the Law Foundation of British Columbia. She is also a Full Professor, adj. in the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry’s Dossetor Centre for Health Ethics at the University of Alberta, a Visiting Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, where she teaches in the Executive Master of Laws Program, and a Faculty Associate at the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University.

Prior to joining the Allard School of Law, she taught at the University of Victoria’s Faculty of Law from 2019 to 2024—making history as a record-setting recipient of reappointment, tenure and promotion in a single motion passed by the university and in record time. She has held teaching positions at the Faculties of Law at Western University, the University of Alberta, and the University of British Columbia. She has served as Visiting Scholar—and subsequently Faculty Associate—at Harvard University’s Department of Philosophy; Nathanson Visiting Fellow at the Jack and Mae Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights at Osgoode Hall Law School; Visiting Scholar at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law; Visiting Academic at the University of Alberta; and Liu Scholar at the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia’s School of Public Policy and Global Affairs. 

Her career has spanned research and senior policy positions with the governments of Ontario and Alberta, as well as non-profit leadership. Founder of the multi-award-winning international mentorship initiative, the PEIF Fund Inc., she is also the Founder of the University of Victoria’s Black Professionals Leadership Program (BPL), now known as the Black Law Student Professional Support (BLSPS) Program—an educational support initiative for Black law students. She served as its inaugural director from 2021 to 2023, raising in that time about three quarters of a million dollars in grants for the program. In 2022, her visionary leadership was recognized with the prestigious $690,000 Racial Justice Grant from the Law Foundation of British Columbia, which now funds her pioneering efforts in the newly rebranded BLSPS Program.

Dr. Iyioha’s scholarship and service to the local and global communities have been recognized nationally and internationally through numerous awards and honours, including the 18^th World Congress on Medical Law Award issued by the World Association for Medical Law for her formative work on legal effectiveness and the Canadian Association of Law Teachers (CALT) Award for Scholarly Work that Makes a Substantial Contribution to Legal Literature for her theory of Substantive Legal Effectiveness (SLE). She was honoured with a Top 40 under 40 in Edmonton Awardby Avenue Magazine for “writing and teaching law with an unflinching commitment to human rights.” She is also the recipient of the Government of Alberta’s Stars of Alberta Award from the province’s Lieutenant Governor and the Minister of Culture and Tourism for exemplary leadership in service and improving the overall quality of life of Albertans and the community—given for her work on the PEIF Fund Service-Mentorship Exchange Program. An acclaimed teacher, she received the University of Victoria Law Students’ Society First Year Class Teaching Award in 2022—for having “made a special contribution to legal education through effective and engaging classroom teaching and a demonstrated commitment to assisting and supporting the academic work of first year students”.

Also a fiction author, Dr. Iyioha’s creative works have been published in several local and international platforms, including in Transition Magazine, a publication of the Hutchins Centre for African and African American Research at Harvard University.

Research Expertise and Supervision

Dr. Iyioha’s scholarship focuses on the limits and effectiveness of law under domestic and international law. Drawing on moral and legal philosophy to explore the role and capacities of law in the fields of health law and policy, international human rights law, torts, public health law, and women’s health law and policy, her work has advanced understanding of why law works and why it fails in various legal, social and geopolitical contexts. She is Principal Investigator on a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Grant for a multi-country study of populism and obedience to law in the context of public health emergencies. She accepts LL.M. and Ph.D. students, as well as post-doctoral applicants interested in these areas of research. She is also interested in research at the intersections of race, health, and human rights law, as well as projects that build on a rich philosophical analysis.