We are thankful to be welcome on these lands in friendship. The lands we are situated on are covered by the Williams Treaties and are the traditional territory of the Mississaugas, a branch of the greater Anishinaabeg Nation, including Algonquin, Ojibway, Odawa and Pottawatomi. These lands remain home to many Indigenous nations and peoples.

We acknowledge this land out of respect for the Indigenous nations who have cared for Turtle Island, also called North America, from before the arrival of settler peoples until this day. Most importantly, we acknowledge that the history of these lands has been tainted by poor treatment and a lack of friendship with the First Nations who call them home.

This history is something we are all affected by because we are all treaty people in Canada. We all have a shared history to reflect on, and each of us is affected by this history in different ways. Our past defines our present, but if we move forward as friends and allies, then it does not have to define our future.

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Jen Rinaldi
PhD

Associate Professor

Legal Studies

Faculty of Social Science and Humanities

@RinaldiJen YouTube

Contact information

Bordessa Hall - Room 514
Downtown Oshawa
55 Bond Street East
Oshawa, ON

905.721.8668 ext. 5873

jen.rinaldi@ontariotechu.ca
Website

Background

Jen Rinaldi is an Associate Professor in Legal Studies at Ontario Tech University. She earned a doctoral degree in Critical Disability Studies at York University, where she studied regulation of reproductive technologies. She has a master’s degree in Philosophy from the University of Guelph, where she studied same-sex marriage and constitutional law.

Rinaldi’s research takes up how non-normative bodies are read, marked, and produced in and through socio-legal discourse. She is committed to communities and embodiments that claim the following identifiers: cripped (or disabled, and especially persons deemed intellectually disabled), mad (persons positioned against and within mental health regimes), fat (bodies framed as obese and discriminated against in the interest of public health), queer and trans (persons who identify as members of LGBTQ+ communities).

Rinaldi is a dedicated member of Recounting Huronia, a research collective that documents the history of the Huronia Regional Centre (a Canadian institution that housed persons with intellectual disability diagnoses) from the perspective of its survivors. This work earned the collective a Community Living Ontario James Montgomerie Community Award in recognition of leadership and innovation in furthering Community Living goals. Rinaldi has co-written a book titled Institutional Violence and Disability: Punishing Conditions. She was also the founder and lead coordinator of the Huronia Survivors Speakers Bureau, which enabled intellectually disabled institutional survivors to tell their stories to audiences across Canada.

Currently, Rinaldi is focused on research and activism related to deinstitutionalization, prison and police abolition, and migrant justice.

Rinaldi received an Ontario Tech University Teaching and Learning Centre Early Career Teaching Award for her work as a course director. She most frequently teaches LGLS 2200U Legal Theory, LGLS 3300U Disability and the Law, LGLS 4200U Law and Social Change, and LGLS 4099U Legal Studies Integrating Project. She designed a course on Art and Law for LGLS 4000U Advanced Topics in Legal Studies.

Her record of service to academic community includes acting as President of the Canadian Disability Studies Association, and founding the still-active student journal Critical Disability Discourse.

Curriculum vitae 2020

Education

PhD, Critical Disability Studies York University
MA, Philosophy University of Guelph

Courses taught

Advanced Topics: Art and Law
Disability and the Law
Law and the Body
Legal Theory
Philosophy of Law

disability and law
feminist and queercrip legal theory
health law and policy
mental health law
reproductive technologies
prison and police abolition
deinstitutionalizaton

Social Science & Humanities Research Council Connection Grant – Jan 2020 – 2 years.
Containing the Margins: Theorizing the Conditions of Institutional Violence, $25,000.
Rossiter, K. (PI), & J. Rinaldi.

Social Science & Humanities Research Council Partnership Grant – Mar 2019 – 2 years.
Transgressing Body Boundaries: Multi-Media Storytelling on Trans Approaches to Weight Stigma, $30,000.
Rinaldi, J. (PI), J. Pyne (PI), M. Friedman, K. Pendleton Jimenez, & D. McPhail.

Strategic Program Investment Fund – Jan 2018 – 3 years.
Huronia Survivors Speakers Bureau, $30,000.
Rinaldi, J. (PI), K. Rossiter, & n.v. davis halifax.

Strategic Program Investment Fund – Jan 2018 – 3 years.
Recounting Huronia: Digital Archive & Survivor Podcast, $300,000.
Rinaldi, J. (PI), K. Rossiter (PI), & n.v. davis halifax.

Social Science & Humanities Research Council Connection Grant – Nov 2017 – 1 year.
Technologies of Justice Symposium, $25,000.
McMorrow, T. (PI), S. Baglay, S., & J. Rinaldi.

Social Science & Humanities Research Council Connection Grant – Nov 2017 – 1 year.
Thickening Fat: Dialogues on Intersectionality, Social Justice, & Fatness, $25,000.
Friedman, M. (PI), J. Rinaldi, & C. Rice.

Social Science & Humanities Research Council Partnership Grant – Jun 2016 – 7 years.
Bodies in Translation: Activist Art, Technology, & Access to Life, $2.5 million.
Rice, C. (PI), E. Chander (PI), K. Aubrecht, A.V. Breen, M.J. Bunch, N. Changfoot, S.J. Chivers, K.L. Church, S.D. Dion, J. Dolmage, P.N. Douglas, D.I. Fells, R. Gorman, n.v. davis halifax, A.V. Hudson, C. Kelly, K. Liddiard, A. MacLeod, D.R. Manning, R. Mykitiuk, M. Orsini, J. Rinaldi, K. Roosen, K. Rossiter, S. Springgay, J. Treviranus, K.J. Wilson, & K.K. Yoshida.

Women’s College Hospital Women’s Xchange 15K Challenge – Jan 2015 – 2 years.
Through Thick & Thin: Investigating Body Image & Body Management among Queer Women in Southern Ontario, $75,000.
Rinaldi, J. (PI), L. Gillis (PI), C. Rice, K. Pendleton Jimenez, M. Friedman, & D. McPhail.

Social Science & Humanities Research Council Insight Development Grant – Jan 2014 – 3 years.
Recounting Huronia: A Participatory Arts-Based Research Project, $75,000.
Rossiter, K. (PI), n.v. davis halifax, D. Fancy, J. Dolmage, J. Rinaldi, P. Seth, & M. Slark.

Involvement

Selected publications
Friedman, M., C. Rice, & J. Rinaldi (Eds.) (2020). Thickening Fat: Fat Bodies,
Intersectionality, & Social Justice. London: Routledge.

Rice, C., K. Pendleton Jimenez, E. Harrison, M. Robinson, A. LaMarre, J. Rinaldi, & J.
Andrew (2020). Bodies at the Intersection: Reconfiguring Intersectionality through Queer Women’s Creative Accounts of their Complex Embodiments. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society, 46(1), 177-200.

Rinaldi, J., & O. Marques (2020). Criminalization & Capture Strategies in the HIV/AIDS
Assemblage. International Journal of Prisoner Health.

Rinaldi, J., C. Rice, & E. Lind, E. (2020). Failure to Launch: One-Person-One-Fare
Airline Policy & the Drawbacks to the Disabled-by-Obesity Legal Argument. Fat
Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight & Society Special Issue: Fatness & Law.

Rinaldi, J., C. Rice, C. Kotow, & E. Lind (2020). Mapping the Circulation of Fat Hatred.
Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight & Society Special Issue:
Fatness & Oppression, 9(1), 37-50.

Rossiter, K., & J. Rinaldi (2019). Institutional Violence & Disability: Punishing Conditions.
London: Routledge.

Rinaldi, J., & S. Fernando (2019). Queer Credibility in the Homonation-State: Interrogating
the Affective Impacts of Credibility Assessments on Racialized Sexual Minority Refugee Claimants. Refuge, 35(1), 32-42.

Einion, A., & J. Rinaldi (Eds.) (2018). Bearing the Weight of the World: Exploring Maternal
Embodiment. Toronto: Demeter Press.

Rinaldi, J., K. Rossiter, & L.K. Jackson (2017). Institutional Survivorship: Editorial
Introduction. Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, 6(3), 1-12.

n.v. davis halifax, D. Fancy, J. Rinaldi, K. Rossiter, & A. Tigchelaar (2017). Recounting
Huronia Faithfully: Attenuating our Methodology to the ‘Fabulation’ of Truths-Telling. Cultural Studies  Critical Methodologies, 18(3), 216-227.

Fernando, S., & J. Rinaldi (2017). Seeking Equity: Disrupting Exclusionary Immigration
Frameworks. Canadian Ethnic Studies Journal Special Issue: Immigration, Racial, & Ethnic Studies in 150 Years of Canada: Retrospects & Prospects, 49(3), 7-26.

Rinaldi, J., C. Rice, A. LaMarre, D. McPhail, & E. Harrison (2017). Fatness & Failing
Citizenship. Somatechnics Special Issue: The Somatechnics of Sexuality in Canada, 7(2), 218-233.
Recent conference presentations
Rinaldi, J. (Feb. 2021). Rewriting Huronia’s History: Oral Histories of Institutional Violence.
International Sociological Association World Congress of Sociology. Online due to COVID 19.

Rinaldi, J., & S. Fernando (Dec. 2019). An Indefinite State: Theorizing Canada’s Migrant
Detention Regime. Law & Society Association of Australia and New Zealand: Survive, Thrive, Die. Law in End Times. Gold Coast, Australia.

Rinaldi, J., K. Rossiter, & S. Saravanamuttu (Mar. 2019). The Responsibility of the Witness in
Institutional Survivors’ Testimonial & Identity Work. Criptic Identities. Leiden, Netherlands.

Rinaldi, J., & J. Dolmage (Jun. 2018). “Of Dark Type & Poor Physique”: Law, Immigration
Restriction, & Disability in Canada, 1900-30. Annual Meeting on Law & Society.
Toronto ON, Canada.

Rinaldi, J., & K. Rossiter (Jun. 2018). Troubling Care: Disability & the Institutional Violence
Continuum. International Conference on Prison Abolition. London UK.

Rinaldi, J., & S. Fernando (May 2018). Canada as Saviour State? Interrogating
Homonationalism & SOGI Refugees. Sexualities Studies Association Annual
Conference, Congress of Humanities & Social Sciences. Regina SK, Canada.

Rinaldi, J., & K. Rossiter (Jan. 2018). The Institutional Cases: Defining the Conditions for
Moral Abdication. Technologies of Justice: Canadian Law & Society Association Mid-Winter Meeting. Oshawa ON, Canada.

Rinaldi, J. (May 2017). Storying Trauma in & against Law. Canadian Disability Studies
Association Annual Conference, Congress of Humanities & Social Sciences. Toronto ON, Canada.

Rinaldi, J., C. Rice, & A. LaMarre (Jun. 2016). Embodying Intersectionality: The Impact of
Body Standards in & on Intersectional Queer Community. Fat Studies: Identity, Agency & Embodiment. Palmerston North, New Zealand.

Fernando, S., & J. Rinaldi (May 2016). De/Constructing Exclusionary Immigration Law &
Policy, Past & Present. Canadian Disability Studies Annual Conference, Congress of
Humanities & Social Sciences. Calgary AB, Canada.
Media appearances

Releasing residential school records is a crucial step toward documenting Canada’s genocidal legacy — but the effort will face considerable challenges

Toronto Star | July 4, 2021

This op-ed by Dr. Jen Rinaldi and Dr. Kate Rossiter discusses why it is important to make residential school records publicly accessible.
View more - Releasing residential school records is a crucial step toward documenting Canada’s genocidal legacy — but the effort will face considerable challenges

Safeguarding Against Abuse

Briarpatch Magazine | June 21, 2016

In February 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously overturned the prohibition on assisted suicide in a decision known as Carter v. Canada. In the wake of this decision, and as we witness the development of the medical assistance in dying legislation (Bill C-14), I see deep divisions and hear grave concerns in the disability communities where I live and work, and where my heart sits. To paraphrase disability rights advocate and my friend Allen Mankewich, when you talk about many of the medical conditions you’d rather die than face, you are talking about me.
View more - Safeguarding Against Abuse

Survivors of institutionalization empowered to speak out

Community Living Ontario | February 29, 2016

Gone, but not forgotten—that's the belief of many former residents of the Huronia Regional Centre. It's been nearly seven years since the institution closed its doors for good, but, for many, the memories live on. A new initiative comprised of survivors is looking to ensure that their experiences will never be forgotten.
View more - Survivors of institutionalization empowered to speak out

Jen Rinaldi PhD