Dr. Joshua Shaw (he/him) PhD

• PGCHE (Kent)
• PhD (Osgoode)
• LLM (Dalhousie)
• JD (Manitoba)
• BSc (Hons) (Manitoba)

Dr. Joshua Shaw is a tenure-track Assistant Professor at the College of Law. He joined the College in July 2025, after previous faculty appointments at the University of Kent and Dalhousie University. 

As a legal scholar, Joshua studies the theory and history of medical law, especially laws affecting the exceptional use of dead bodies and biomaterials. His research is situated in the law and humanities, relying on close readings of legal materials and other texts to theorize the nature and function of legal interpretation relative to medical practice. His current project is a “minor jurisprudence” of 19th- and 20th-century anatomy law in England and other common law jurisdictions.

Joshua’s contributions to jurisprudence are primarily in critical legal theory, especially themes of interpretation, bodies and materiality.

Joshua is a lawyer in Ontario, having received his call to the bar in 2017. Upon completing his articling clerkship at the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario (IPC/O), he continued to work at the IPC/O within their health policy department on legislative and policy matters until 2019. He is currently non-practising.

Joshua is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA). FHEA is a professional designation in higher education teaching, which he received from the British charity AdvanceHE after completing his Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education (PGCHE) at the University of Kent. He is also a member of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities; Canadian Law and Society Association; and Canadian Association of Law Teachers. He is a member of the board of directors of the Canadian Law and Society Association, and currently serves as its Vice President (Membership).

2026-2027

• LAW 211.5 Tort law
• LAW 314.3 Health law
• LAW 394.3 Jurisprudence

Peer-reviewed articles (15)

Shaw, Joshua. 2025. The Legal Somatics of Body Bequests Before the Anatomy Act 1832. Mortality (online first), https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2025.2586001.

Shaw, Joshua. 2025. A Common Law Power to Dissect: A Medico-Legal History. Medical Law Review 33(1): https://doi.org/10.1093/medlaw/fwaf006.

Shaw, Joshua David Michael. 2024. Confronting Jurisdiction with Antinomian Bodies. Law, Culture and the Humanities 20(1): 94-119, https://doi.org/10.1177/1743872120942770.



King, Tyler J., Joshua D.M. Shaw and Liam Kennedy. 2024. Documenting the Document: The Forensic Hospital Report and Its Knowledge Moves. Social and Legal Studies 33(3): 309-327, https://doi.org/10.1177/09646639231187093.

Kennedy, Liam, Joshua D.M. Shaw and Tyler J. King. 2023. Disciplinary Paternalism and Resistance in Ontario’s Forensic Mental Health System. Critical Criminology 31: 843-858, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-023-09714-8.

Shaw, Joshua D.M., Tyler J. King and Liam Kennedy. 2023. Constructing Risk through Jurisdictional Talk: The Ontario Review Board Process under Part XX.1 of the Criminal Code. Canadian Journal of Law and Society 38(2): 180-200, https://doi.org/10.1017/cls.2023.17.

Shaw, Joshua D.M. and Roxanne Mykitiuk. 2023. Jurisgenerative Tissues: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Legal Secretions of 3D-bioprinting. Law and Critique 34(1): 105-125, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-022-09319-0.

Shaw, Joshua D.M. and Daniel Konikoff. 2022. When Prisoners’ ‘Right to Die’ Goes Online: A Case-study of Legal and Penal Sensibilities. Canadian Journal of Law and Society 37(3): 451-471, https://doi.org/10.1017/cls.2022.8.

Shaw, Joshua David Michael. 2021. The Spatio-Legal Production of Bodies Through the Legal Fiction of Death. Law and Critique 32(1): 69-90, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-020-09269-5.

Shaw, Joshua David Michael. 2020. Transcarceral Lawscapes Enacted in Moments of Aboriginalisation: A Case-Study of an Indigenous Woman Released on Urban Parole. International Journal of Law in Context 16(4): 422-442, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744552320000427.

Shaw, Joshua David Michael. 2018. Contagion and the Public Body: A Re-Ordering of Private and Public Spheres in R v Gowdy. Windsor Review of Legal and Social Issues 39(1): 127-165.

Shaw, Joshua. 2015. De-Recognition of Disability: Canadian Parens Patriae Jurisdiction and Sterilization of Children. Windsor Review of Legal and Social Issues 36(1): 147-174.

Shaw, Joshua David Michael. 2015. The Queer Child Deserves Protection: Bill 18 and the Justifiable Infringement of Denominational Schools’ Freedom of Religion. Manitoba Law Journal 38(1): 331-357.

Alards-Tomalin, Douglas, Alexander Walker, Joshua D.M. Shaw and Launa C. Leboe-McGowan. 2015. Is 9 louder than 1? Cross-modal congruency effects between number magnitude and sound loudness Acta Psychologica 160(1): 95-103.

Alards-Tomalin, Douglas, Jason P. Leboe-McGowan, Joshua D.M. Shaw and Launa C. Leboe-McGowan. 2014. The effects of numerical magnitude, size, and color saturation on perceived interval duration. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 40(2): 555-566. 

 

Peer-reviewed book sections (1)

Shaw, Joshua D.M. 2024. A Minor Jurisprudence of Play: Becoming Jurisprudents Through Play in the Majora’s Mask. In Dale Mitchell, Ashley Pearson and Timothy Peters, eds, Law, Video Games, Virtual Worlds: Playing Law. Routledge.

 

Peer-edited book sections (3)

Shaw, Joshua. 2025. Public health law through the life course: a case-study on steroids. In Jacob J. Shelley, C. Tess Sheldon, and Ubaka Ogbogu, eds, Public Health Law and Policy in Canada (5th edition). LexisNexis Canada.

Shaw, Joshua D.M. 2025. Humic Lawscapes. In Imogen Jones and Marc Trabsky, eds, Routledge Handbook of Law and Death. Routledge.

Mykitiuk, Roxanne and Joshua D.M. Shaw. 2023. Law and Gender. In Jan M Smits, Jaakko Husa, Catherine Valcke and Madalena Barreto Torres de Mendonca Narciso, eds, Elgar Encyclopedia of Comparative Law. Edward Elgar.

 

Dissertations (2)

Shaw, Joshua David Michael. 2024. The Heteronomy of Flesh: A Minor Jurisprudence of the Use of the Human Dead and Tissues. PhD Dissertation, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University.

• Supervised by Roxanne Mykitiuk (principal), Ruth Buchanan and Dayna Nadine Scott; Examined by Bruce Ryder (chair), Stewart Motha (external), Jean-Thomas Tremblay (internal), Ruth Buchanan (internal), and Roxanne Mykitiuk (supervisor)

Shaw, Joshua David Michael. 2016. Defining Death: Law, Language and Systems. LLM Thesis, Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University.

• Supervised by Jocelyn Downie; Read by Richard Devlin and Sheila Wildeman