Theodor Kerzner Q.C. Research Grants

The Society provides research grants to people undertaking scholarly research into any aspect of Canadian legal history. Faculty and graduate students at Universities are eligible, as are independent scholars. These grants, which are unlikely to exceed $3,000 per person, are given to defray research expenses connected with any project in any field of Canadian legal history. The Theodor Kerzner Q.C. Research Grants programme was created in 2016 to honour the memory of Theodor (Ted) Kerzner, Q.C. a long–time member of the Osgoode Society, a very generous benefactor of the Society, and a lawyer who took a keen interest in legal education and legal scholarship in many fields, especially legal history

There are no application forms. Applicants should describe their project and include a budget and a curriculum vitae. Please send to the administrator, Amanda Campbell at amanda.campbell@osgoodesociety.ca. The deadline for requests to be considered at our spring Board meeting is March 31st. The deadline for our September Board meeting is August 31st. Money granted in a calendar year needs to be spent in the same calendar year. Thus grants made in the spring must be expended the same year. Grants made in September can be for either the same calendar year, or the following one, but not both.

Successful applicants undertake to acknowledge the support of the Theodor Kerzner Q.C. Research Grants Programme in any publications which result, in whole or in part, from a Theodor Kerzner Q.C. Research Grant.

Examples of recently awarded grants

  • 2023 – Kaitlin Findley is a P.H.D. student at Cornell University. This research investigates the engagement of the United States and Canada with international humanitarian oversight of population detention and transfer during the 1940s and its legacy within survivor communities, drawing from international, national, and community archives.
  • 2023 – Jonathan Quint, a P.H.D. student at the University of Michigan, whose research will focus on Indigenous-settler relations in what are now Essex and Kent counties between 1790 and 1810, when migrants from Europe and the United States and the expansion of Upper Canada’s administrative bureaucracy increasingly put pressure on Indigenous homelands.
  • 2022 – Kandice Klein is a P.H.D student at the University of Saskatchewan. This project is “Sexual Violence and Crimes Against and Within the Prairie Family, 1901 to 1931,” . The research looks at filial sexual violence from 1901 to 1931 in Saskatchewan.
    punished, protected, and made vulnerable both perpetrators and victims of incest.
  • 2021 – Tyler Wentzell, an SJD candidate at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. This project is a legal history topic, examining the evolution of the law regarding the domestic use of military force from the 1918 conscription riots to the present day.
  • 2021 – James Barry, a PHD candidate at York University. His current work is a biography of John Reeves (1752-1829), a barrister and legal writer who served as the first Chief Justice of Newfoundland
  • 2020-Amy Kaufman, University of London, for her work on suffragists writing about the law as a strategy to increase public legal literacy and as a strategy to advocate for legal reform, tracing this phenomenon from Victorian Britain to Canada in
    the early twentieth century.
  • 2019-Desiree Valadares, University of California, for work on the reparative logics of World War II confinement camp preservation in British Columbia, Alaska and Hawaii
  • 2019-Christopher Moore, for his work on Chief Justice Archer Martin
  • 2018-Virginia Torrie and Thomas Telfer, for their work on landmark cases in bankruptcy and insolvency law
  • 2017 – Sarah Hamill, City of London University, for work on the history of prohibition in Canada.
  • 2016 – Adam Dodek, University of Ottawa, for work on the history of  the Heenan Blaikie law firm
  • 2016 – Jean-Franois Lozier, Canadian Museum of History, for a study of a murder case in New France in 1699
  • 2016 – Virginia Torrie, University of Manitoba, for an investigation of the operation of the Farmers’ Creditors Arrangement Act in the 1930s.
  • 2016 – Jacqueline Briggs, University of Toronto, for her work on the history of aboriginal peoples and Canadian criminal justice.
  • 2014 – Philip Girard, Osgoode Hall Law School, for work on a History of Law in Canada
  • 2013 – Charles Hoffman, McGill University, for travel to Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa
  • 2013 – Patrick Connor, York University, for data entry assistance for a book on the history of crime and punishment in Upper Canada.
  • 2012 – Colin Campbell, University of Western Ontario, for research into the career of J.L. Ilsley
  • 2012 – Professor David Schorr, University of Tel Aviv, for research on the history of Canadian water law.
  • 2011 – Bradley Miller, a graduate student at the University of Toronto, for research on the history of Canadian extradition law.
  • 2011 – Rosemary Shipton, for work on the career of R. Roy McMurtry
  • 2010 – Professor James Muir, University of Alberta, for assistance in running a symposium in the history of Canadian Property Law (Note – this symposium contributed towards the publication of E. Tucker, J. Muir and B. Ziff, eds., Property on Trial: Canadian Cases in Context (Osgoode Society, 2012).
  • 2010 – Professor Dominique Clement, University of Alberta, for research into the history of the British Columbia Human Rights Commission.
  • 2010 – Coel Kirkby, a graduate student at Cambridge, to undertake research at Library and Archives Canada.


Theodor Kerzner, Q.C.



Property on Trial: Canadian Cases in Context

Some of our grants have led to Osgoode Society publications. This is one of those publications – see the grants awarded in 2010.

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Equality Deferred: Sex Discrimination and British Columbia’s Human Rights State, 1953-84

Some of our grants have led to Osgoode Society publications. This is one of those publications – see the grants awarded in 2010.

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