Jen Rinaldi

Jen Rinaldi is an Associate Professor in Legal Studies at Ontario Tech University, specializing in critical disability studies, feminist legal theory, and socio-legal discourse. She holds a PhD from York University and an MA from the University of Guelph. Her research focuses on non-normative bodies, institutional violence, and marginalized communities including disabled, queer, and trans populations.

Education: PhD in Critical Disability Studies (York University), MA in Philosophy (University of Guelph).

Research interests include disability and law, prison abolition, migrant justice, and deinstitutionalization. She co-authored Institutional Violence and Disability: Punishing Conditions and co-founded the Huronia Survivors Speakers Bureau. Her work earned the Community Living Ontario James Montgomerie Award and teaching recognition from Ontario Tech University.

Grants include SSHRC funding for projects on institutional violence, fat stigma, and migrant justice. She teaches courses like Disability and the Law and Law and Social Change.

• Awarded SSHRC grants totaling over $2.5M for interdisciplinary research.
• President of the Canadian Disability Studies Association.
• Designed Art and Law as part of Advanced Topics in Legal Studies.

Labs/Teams: Active in Recounting Huronia, documenting Huronia Regional Centre survivors' histories, and Bodies in Translation, exploring activist art and access to life.