Joan Braun

Joan Braun serves as Assistant Professor at Lakehead University's Bora Laskin Faculty of Law since August 2020, teaching Administrative Law, Criminal Law, Elder Law, and Alternative Dispute Resolution. Her interdisciplinary expertise bridges legal scholarship and social work practice.

Academic background:

• PhD and LLM: Peter A. Allard School of Law
• MSW: University of British Columbia
• LLB: University of British Columbia
• BA (Psychology): University of Victoria

Professor Braun's research critically examines law and aging through socio-legal methodologies. She investigates real-world impacts of elder protection statutes, mental capacity issues (particularly dementia-related), and criminal law responses to elder abuse. Her scholarship emphasizes relational autonomy frameworks and human rights compliance with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, employing qualitative methods like interviews and focus groups to analyze implementation gaps in adult guardianship systems.

Recent publications (2020-2024) demonstrate three convergent trends: empirical studies on guardianship law implementation (notably BC's Adult Guardianship Act), theoretical applications of relational autonomy in capacity assessment, and extensive analysis of ADA mediation practices for disability accommodations. Her work consistently addresses systemic vulnerabilities of older adults through interdisciplinary collaboration, with significant contributions to elder abuse prevention and legal responses to cognitive disability.

She currently serves as co-investigator on an SSHRC-funded project examining capacity assessment in abuse contexts and principal investigator for a criminal law response study analyzing sentencing for crimes against older adults. Her research collaborations extend to the Centre for Research on Personhood in Dementia (University of BC) and Simon Fraser University's Applied Legal Research Group.