News

Congratulations to Schulich School of Law Associate Professor Dr. Sara Ross who recently received a Dalhousie University President’s Research Excellence Award for her legal anthropology research on Acadian language, property, and cultural rights. The honour follows her multi-year Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Development Grant supporting the same research program.

The President’s Research Excellence Awards recognize outstanding scholarship across Dalhousie University and celebrate research that advances knowledge, informs public policy, and contributes to society. Ross received the award in the Emerging Investigator category, which honours early-career faculty members who are already making significant contributions within their fields and the wider research community. Presented annually across four broad disciplinary areas, the award includes a $2,000 research grant that can only be given once during a recipient’s career.

“Meaningful support of this kind is critical to my work on the cultural displacement and unjust treatment of contemporary Acadian communities in the Atlantic Northeast and Southern United States, as well as my work on the intersection of law, culture, and the city,” says Ross.

“This award shows real institutional support from Dalhousie for work that is focused on rooting out systemic inequalities in Atlantic Canada.”

Beyond her research and teaching commitments, Ross serves as the associate director of the Marine & Environmental Law Institute at the Schulich School of Law, the director of its Marine & Environmental Law Program, and the Yogis and Keddy Chair in Human Rights Law. She is also the program chair and elected secretary of the board of directors for the Association of Law, Property, and Society, as well as the long-term treasurer for the board of directors of the Canadian Association of Law Teachers.

Before joining Schulich Law, she taught at Osgoode Hall Law School and the Peter A. Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia. She has also held Banting, Killam, and SSHRC postdoctoral fellowships, and is a former editor-in-chief of the McGill Law Journal as well as a former co-editor-in-chief of the Canadian Legal Education Annual Review.

Ross has published widely on cultural heritage, human rights, and socio-legal studies, appearing in leading journals including the Canadian Bar Review, Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, and the International Journal of Cultural Property. Her last book, Law and Intangible Cultural Heritage in the City, was published in 2019 by Routledge, and her forthcoming book, Nowhere to Go: Housing Heritage, Hotels, and Homelessness, is expected to be published in 2027 by Cambridge University Press.