New faculty member and three endowed chairs join USask Law

Dr. Alan Hanna joins USask Law as an associate professor and tenured faculty member on July 1, 2026. He is an associate professor at the University of Victoria Faculty of Law. 

“I'm excited to be joining the faculty at the University of Saskatchewan College of Law. What I am looking forward to the most is the opportunity to help shape the next generation of legal minds — not just teaching doctrine, but encouraging students to think critically about the diversity of legal orders in Canada and approaching law with both rigor and empathy. I hope to spend my time learning as much from my students as I hope they learn from me. I look forward to meeting and collaborating with new colleagues within the law school and from other disciplines across campus.”

About Dr. Alan Hanna: Alan Hanna began teaching law in 2016 as a sessional and became an Assistant Professor at the University of Victoria in 2019 in the JD/JID program. His role as a professor is informed by many teachings that have been gifted to him over the years combined with his work as a lawyer representing First Nation governments, both of which continue to the present.

Dr. Hanna’s teaching and research interests include Indigenous laws and jurisdiction, governance, rights and title, and environmental sustainability under Indigenous legal traditions, Aboriginal law and jurisprudence, and the many intersections of these disparate systems. He has taught courses that focus on the impacts of the application of Canadian common law to Indigenous Peoples; that teach law students to develop skills for learning and understanding Indigenous laws and legal reasoning; that contemplate how agreements and resulting obligations arise in different Indigenous legal orders as alternate conceptions of contract; and field schools in Indigenous law in the Northwest Territories.

Dr. Hanna is a citizen of the Métis Nation – Saskatchewan with ancestral connections to the Duck Lake and Prince Albert areas. He is connected to the Northern Secwepemc community of T’exelc in Williams Lake, BC. His PhD work involved analyses of Tsilhqot’in law applied to the access and use of surface water to provide a framework for informing contemporary Tsilhqot’in watershed governance.

Richard Moon begins his term on July 1, 2026, and will serve in the college until December 31, 2026. He is a Professor Emeritus and former Distinguished University Professor from the University of Windsor Faculty of Law.

“I am delighted to be joining the College of Law for the Fall term. The college has a wonderful reputation not only for teaching and scholarship but also for collegiality and inclusion. I am looking forward to being part of this academic community. I am already acquainted with several faculty members  and I am looking forward to meeting many others.  While at the college I will be completing a report for the Law Commission of Canada on the Future of Freedom of Expression and working on a book about  Andrews v. Law Society of BC, the first decision of the Supreme Court of Canada dealing with equality rights under the Charter.”

About Richard Moon: Richard Moon BA (Trent), LLB (Queen's), BCL (Oxford) recently retired from the Faculty of Law, University of Windsor, where he was a Distinguished University Professor. His research focuses on freedom of religion and freedom of expression. His most recent books include The Life and Death of Freedom of Expression (U of T Press, 2024), Freedom of Conscience and Religion, 2nd ed.  (Irwin Law/U of T Press, 2024), a co-edited collection, Indigenous Spirituality and Religious Freedom (U of T Press, 2025), and a co-edited Open Access Constitutional Law Casebook, CanLii Platform (2025).

Dr. Kiran Banerjee begins his term on July 1, 2026, and will serve in the college until June 30, 2027. He is an associate professor at Dalhousie University in the Department of Political Science.

"I am delighted to join the College of Law as the Ariel F. Sallows Chair in Human Rights and to be returning to the University of Saskatchewan for the coming academic year. As part of my visit, I will host a workshop on the global politics of international asylum coordination, with the generous support of the College of Law, as well as advance my broader research on global governance, forced migration, and immigration policy. I also look forward to offering the Sallows Seminar, which will focus on international migration, to students in the College of Law during the fall term."

About Dr. Kiran Banerjee: Dr. Kiran Banerjee (MA Chicago, PhD Toronto) is an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Forced Migration Governance and Refugee Protection in the Department of Political Science at Dalhousie University. His current research addresses global migration governance in the context of forced displacement, transitional asylum coordination and the rise of new forms of externalization, as well as the normative implications of recognizing the agency of displaced persons in the refugee regime.

Dr. Banerjee’s broader research interests include political theory, international ethics, the history of political thought, international relations theory, and migration studies, as well as legal theory. His work has appeared in various scholarly journals and edited volumes; Dr. Banerjee’s recent book, Migration Governance in North America(MQUP, 2025), co-edited with Craig Damian Smith, develops a cross-disciplinary assessment of the contemporary politics of North American migration, refugee, and asylum governance.

Before joining the Department of Political Science, Dr. Banerjee was a faculty member in the Department of Political Studies at the University of Saskatchewan and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Global Policy Initiative and School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University. He holds a PhD from the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto."

Bob Kirkpatrick begins his term on August 1, 2026, and will serve in the college until May 31, 2027. He is a USask Law alum and former sessional lecturer at the college.

“The establishment of the Estey Chair in Business Law by the Estey family was a tremendous gift to the college and university. I’m honored and very grateful for the opportunity to serve as the chair for the upcoming year. I greatly enjoyed my time as a student at the college and in later years teaching as a sessional lecturer. I’m very much looking forward to contributing to the college in the coming year.”

About Bob Kirkpatrick: Robert (Bob) Kirkpatrick K.C. is a former Senior Vice President, General Counsel, Securities, and Corporate Secretary at Nutrien Ltd. Kirkpatrick attended the University of Saskatchewan where he obtained his B.Comm (1986) and LLB (1987). Over a 30-year career with Nutrien (and its predecessor Potashcorp), he was principally responsible for the corporate secretarial functions, securities regulatory compliance and advising in the areas of corporate finance, M&A, governance and disclosure. Kirkpatrick is a former Director of SQM in Chile, a past Chair of the Board of St. Paul’s Hospital, and a former Director of the United Way of Saskatoon and of Tennis Canada.

Kirkpatrick currently serves on the Saskatchewan Chapter Executive for the Institute of Corporate Directors, the board of Foundation of St. Josephs Seminary and Newman Theological College and is Chair of the Tennis Canada Hall of Fame Committee. He has also previously taught Securities Regulation at USask Law as a sessional lecturer.