معرفی
Dr. Emma Cunliffe is a Professor at the Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia. She holds a BA and LLB from Melbourne University, and an LLM and PhD from UBC. Her academic career spans multiple institutions including her current position at UBC where she teaches criminal law, evidence, jurisprudence, and seminars in factual reasoning and research methodologies.
Dr. Cunliffe's research focuses on how courts decide facts in contested cases, with particular interest in expert evidence, implicit bias, and legal processes regarding gendered and racialized violence, especially as they affect Indigenous people. Her work has had significant real-world impact, most notably her 2011 book Murder, Medicine and Motherhood which was the first to argue that Australian woman Kathleen Folbigg had been wrongly convicted of killing her four children. Her scholarship played a crucial role in Folbigg's eventual exoneration, and she is currently preparing a second edition of the book documenting Folbigg's pathway to freedom.
Her recent scholarship demonstrates a consistent focus on the reliability of forensic evidence and judicial gatekeeping of expert testimony. The articles reveal a trajectory from examining specific wrongful conviction cases toward developing broader theoretical frameworks for understanding how discriminatory knowledge and beliefs reinforce biases within legal systems. Her work increasingly addresses the intersection of forensic science, colonial legal structures, and the treatment of Indigenous people in Canadian legal processes.
- Courage in Law award from the Indigenous Legal Students Association (2016)
- UBC Killam Research Fellowship (2014)
- Killam Award for Teaching Excellence (2010)
- George Curtis Memorial Award for Teaching (2010)
Dr. Cunliffe supervises graduate students in expert evidence, judicial fact-finding, and the criminalization of women, though she notes limited capacity for new supervisees. She served as director of research and policy for the joint Federal-Nova Scotia Mass Casualty Commission from 2021-2023, which studied the context, causes, and circumstances of a mass casualty incident in Nova Scotia. She is also a member of the evidence-based forensic initiative at the University of New South Wales and currently has an SSHRC-funded project analyzing how facts are 'found' in Canadian legal proceedings involving gendered and racialized violence.
