Emily Snyder

(She, Her, Hers)

Associate Professor

Indigenous Knowledges, Power, Conflict and Ideas, Sociology

Office: ART 315
Email: emily.snyder@ubc.ca

Research Summary

Socio-legal studies; social inequalities; gender, sexuality, and law; connections between health and law, with a focus on the legal regulation of STBBIs; Indigenous laws and legal issues.

Courses & Teaching

SOCI 291 Fundamentals of Sociological Research; SOCI 374 Sexuality, Law, and Society; SOCI 362 Social Inequality; SOCI 415 Feminist Theory; SOCI 474 Advanced Studies in Sexuality, Law, and Society.

Degrees

PhD, University of Alberta
MA, Carleton University
BA (Hons), Saint Mary’s University

Research Interests & Projects

My research focuses on law and health as social sites through which inequalities can be reproduced and constructed, but also examines how inequalities are challenged. Drawing on methods such as feminist critical discourse analysis, interviewing, and working in collaboration with others, I examine issues such as gendered power dynamics in law, sexuality and law, Indigenous legal issues, and inequalities and settler institutions. I am a settler scholar working in the unceded territory of the Syilx Peoples.

STBBI Health Governance in Canada: A Socio-Legal Review of Partner Notification Practices Project: While often imagined to belong to the realm of medicine, STBBIs can also be described as a social phenomenon. This project involved conducting a scoping review from the perspective that sex (and STBBI transmission) is shaped by social relations, and that the responses to STBBIs through medicine, law, and other formal and informal responses are deeply social. This project is supported by funds from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, through a Knowledge Synthesis Grant. The evidence brief and final report from this project will be posted here shortly.

I am also working on a project that examines how STBBIs (excluding HIV) are represented in Canadian legal decisions. This research builds on previous work that I have done on social constructions of criminality and HIV in settler colonial contexts. This project is supported by funds from the University of British Columbia (through a Hampton New Faculty Grant and through the Aspire Fund).

Selected Publications & Presentations

Napoleon, Val, Snyder, Emily, Johnson, Rebecca & McKenzie, Debra (2025). (Eds.) Ravens Talking: Indigenous Feminist Legal Studies. University of Toronto Press.

Snyder, Emily (2025). An Introduction: Indigenous Feminist Legal Studies. In Napoleon, V., Snyder, E., Johnson, R., & McKenzie, D. (eds), Ravens Talking: Indigenous Feminist Legal Studies (Toronto: U of T Press), 29-42.

Kaye, Julie & Snyder, Emily (2025). Deliberating Feminist Legal Strategies. In Napoleon, V., Snyder, E., Johnson, R., & McKenzie, D. (eds), Ravens Talking: Indigenous Feminist Legal Studies (Toronto: U of T Press), 143-178.

Snyder, Emily & Anderson, Christy (2023). Assessing Legal Issues and Challenges Faced in Indigenous Legal Advocacy During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Final report.

Snyder, Emily (2021). Indigenous Feminist Legal Pedagogies. Osgoode Hall Law Journal, 58(2), 385-417.

Snyder, Emily & Kisikaw Piyesis, Margaret (2021). Indigenous Resilience and Allyship in the Context of HIV Non-Disclosure Criminalization: Conversations with Indigenous People Living with HIV and Allies Working in Support of Community. Journal of Indigenous HIV Research, 11.

Snyder, Emily & Anderson, Christy (2021). Assessing Legal Issues and Challenges Faced in Indigenous Legal Advocacy During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Interim Report.

Napoleon, Val & Snyder, Emily (2020). Housing on Reserve: Developing a Critical Indigenous Feminist Property Theory. In Cameron, A., Graben, S. & Napoleon, V (eds), Creating Indigenous Property: Power, Rights, and Relationships (Toronto: U of T Press), 41-93.

Snyder, Emily (2020). Indigenous feminist legal theory: A multi-juridical analysis of the limits of law on Indigenous women’s health in relation to HIV in Canada. In Iyioha, I. (ed), Women’s Health and the Limits of Law: Domestic and International Perspectives (London: Routledge), 212-231.

Snyder, Emily (2019). Challenges in Gendering Indigenous Legal Education: Insights from Professors Teaching about Indigenous Laws. Canadian Journal of Law and Society, 34(1), 33-53.

Snyder, Emily (2018). Gender, Power, and Representations of Cree Law. UBC Press.

Snyder, Emily (2018). The Impacts of the Criminalization of HIV Non-Disclosure on Indigenous People: A Case Study of Regina. Report. Available online.

Snyder, Emily (2015). Queering Indigenous Legal Studies, Dalhousie Law Journal, 38(2), 591-618.

Snyder, Emily; Napoleon, Val; Borrows, John (2015). Gender and Violence: Drawing on Indigenous Legal Resources. UBC Law Review, 48(2), 593-654.

Snyder, Emily (2014). Indigenous Feminist Legal Theory. Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, 26(2), 365-401.