The Honourable L.S. Tony Mandamin, IPC, is a retired Judge of the Federal Court, Trial Division. Tony has extensive experience in Indigenous law and Aboriginal issues. He was called to the Bar in 1983 and established the first Indigenous law firm in Alberta in 1985, representing First Nations, Indigenous organizations, and Treaty and Metis individuals.

Before being appointed to the Bench, Tony was lead counsel in numerous significant Indigenous Law cases, including at the Supreme Court of Canada. He was appointed a Provincial Court Judge in 1999, sitting in the Calgary and area criminal courts. He was then appointed to the Federal Court in 2007, and sat on numerous landmark decisions, and also chaired a committee of judges, Indigenous lawyers, CBA Aboriginal law practitioners and Department of Justice lawyers in developing the Federal Court Aboriginal Law Practice Guidelines to assist practitioners who had Aboriginal issues before the Court.

Amongst his many other achievements Tony was awarded a Doctor of Laws Honoris Causa by the Law Society of Ontario in 2017. He was also awarded the designation of Indigenous Peoples’ Counsel (IPC) by the Indigenous Bar Association in 2019.

Adebayo Majekolagbe is an Assistant Professor at the University of Alberta, Faculty of Law. He has over a decade of post-call legal experience, and has appeared at all levels of the Nigerian judicial system. He holds Master of Laws degrees from the University of Lagos, Nigeria and Dalhousie University, Canada. He also holds a PhD from the Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University. Adebayo is a fellow of the Marine and Environmental Law Institute, Dalhousie University and a member of the International Association for Impact Assessment, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the Global Network for Human Rights and the Environment, and the Environmental Planning and Assessment Caucus of the Canadian Environmental Network. He has won several awards including SSHRC’s Vanier Award, Killam Trust’s Killam Award and others. His work on Just Transition and Impact Assessment was recognized at SSHRC’s “Real Insight. Real Impact. Real Purpose” showcase on Parliament Hill in 2023. Adebayo has researched and published on numerous topics relating to just transition, impact assessment, sustainability and climate change law and human rights. He also teaches courses at the University of Alberta, Faculty of Law including climate change law, environmental law, and constitutional law.

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Jessica Eisen is an Associate Professor at the University of Alberta Faculty of Law. Her research interests include animals and the law, constitutional and comparative constitutional law, equality and antidiscrimination law, feminist legal theory, intergenerational justice, and law and social movements. Professor Eisen’s research has been published in the Journal of Law and Equality, Animal Law Review, Canadian Journal of Poverty Law, Transnational Legal Theory, Queen’s Law Journal, ICON: International Journal of Constitutional Law, University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, University of Toronto Law Journal, and elsewhere. She has studied at Barnard College, Columbia University (BA, Political Science and Human Rights Studies, 2004); The University of Toronto Faculty of Law (JD, 2009); Osgoode Hall Law School (LLM, 2014); and Harvard Law School (SJD, 2019); and has worked at WeirFoulds LLP, the Ontario Ministry of Labour, and the Constitutional Law Branch of the Ministry of the Attorney General for Ontario.

Gerard Kennedy joined U of A Law in July 2023, having previously been a faculty member at the University of Manitoba's Faculty of Law for over three years. He researches the role of courts in society, specifically how different actors and institutions within or adjacent to the legal profession uphold the rule of law and facilitate access to justice. He principally does this through analyzing civil justice and procedure and administrative law and procedure, frequently with a comparative lens. He has authored over thirty journal articles on these topics, and five books, including The Charter of Rights in Litigation: Direction from the Supreme Court of Canada; The Civil Litigation Process, 9th edition; Public Law, 5th edition, and Boundaries of Judicial Review: The Law of Justiciability in Canada, 3rd edition.

Professor Kennedy received his Juris Doctor at Queen’s University, where he was the sole recipient of the Dean’s Key in his graduating class. He then clerked at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice before earning a Masters of Law at Harvard Law School as a Frank Knox Memorial Fellow. His doctoral studies at Osgoode Hall Law School were supported by a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholarship and a SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS Doctoral Scholarship. As a doctoral student, he held scholarship-supported visiting positions at NYU School of Law and the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for Procedural Law.

Professor Kennedy’s interests in the role of courts in society, and specifically civil and administrative justice, were largely inspired by his four years as a litigator at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP. He has remained an active member of the legal profession, as a member of the bars of Ontario, Manitoba, and Alberta. He serves on the Alberta Judicial Council, the Federal Courts Rules Committee, and the (advisory) boards of Advocates for the Rule of Law, the Centre for Constitutional Studies, and the Edmonton Bar Association. He has given numerous continuing professional development presentations for organizations as diverse as The Advocates' Society, American College of Trial Lawyers (Manitoba chapter), and the Manitoba Council of Administrative Tribunals, among many others. He has been a frequent volunteer at pro bono legal clinics, even after leaving full-time practice. His commitment to pro bono work was recognized by the 2016 Young Advocates’ Society Commitment to Pro Bono Award.

Matthew Wildcat is a member of Ermineskin Cree Nation. He is the Director of the Indigenous Governance and Partnership program and an assistant professor of Native Studies at the University of Alberta. He is a co-Director of the Prairie Indigenous Relationality Network. Matthew also provides governance and strategic advice to various Indigenous organizations and runs the Relational Governance Project that looks at how First Nations co-govern with each other.

Krishen Singh has a general litigation practice at Bennett Jones LLP. He enjoys advising clients on human rights and constitutional matters, and has assisted as counsel before all levels of Alberta courts as well as the Supreme Court of Canada. Prior to joining Bennett Jones, Krishen completed articles of clerkship with the Court of King's Bench of Alberta.

While attending law school at the University of Alberta, Krishen worked as a Writing Fellow for the university's Legal Research and Writing Program and completed an internship with the Alberta Court of Justice's Mental Health Court. He won the Bereskin & Parr LLP Prize in Intellectual Property and the Darcy Readman Prize in Personal Property Security Law. Prior to law school Krishen completed a Bachelor's of Science degree in Biological Sciences and Psychology.

Krishen has held positions with Student Legal Services and currently holds an executive position with the Canadian Bar Association Health Law Section.

Dr. Sevan Beukian (she/her/ան/هي) is the inaugural Director (Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility), Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at the University of Calgary. Prior to that, she was the Senior Executive Advisor on Anti-Racism and Intersectionality at the City of Edmonton. She has worked in provincial and municipal governments to incorporate GBA+, anti-racism and intersectionality into policies, programs, and systems change.

Beukian’s experience spans over a decade in teaching, research, and public policy across government, university, non-profit and community-based work. Her approach combines (non-Western) intersectional feminism, queer theory, anti-racism, trauma-informed approach, and anti-oppressive framework with a strong commitment to reconciliation and decolonization. These are shaped by her lived experience and identity as an immigrant and racialized woman from the SWANA region. Sevan respectfully acknowledges that she is a visitor in Treaty 7 Territory and in Métis Nation of Alberta Region 3.

Beukian holds a PhD in political science from the University of Alberta and a Master of Arts in political studies from the American University of Beirut from Lebanon. Her current research focuses on the way trauma and memory shape national identity discourses. It examines the impact of intergenerational traumatic memories (of genocide) and post-war experiences on national identity constructions, focusing on the Canadian and Armenian context. Beukian’s publications have appeared in Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, Armenian Review, Routledge, Demeter Press, Palgrave Macmillan, among others.

Dr. Rebecca Sockbeson is of the Penobscot Indian Nation, Indian Island, Maine, the Waponahki Confederacy of tribes located in Maine, United States and the Maritime provinces of Canada. She is the 8th child of the Elizabeth Sockbeson clan, the auntie of over 100 Waponahki & Stoney Sioux youth and the mother of three children who are also of the Alexis Nakota Sioux First Nation of Alberta. A political activist and scholar, she graduated from Harvard University where she received her master’s degree in education. She went on to confer her PhD in Educational Policy Studies at the University of Alberta, specializing in Indigenous Peoples Education. Her research focus is Indigenous knowledge, Aboriginal healing through language and culture, anti-racism and decolonization. Her doctoral study engages with how Indigenous ways of knowing and being can inform policy development. She currently serves as Associate Professor for the University of Alberta’s Indigenous Peoples Education Program, and Associate Director, Intersections of Gender, VPRI Signature Research Areas. In 2013, she and her Indigenous colleagues received a University of Alberta Human Rights Teaching Award for her role in coordinating and teaching Alberta’s first compulsory course in Aboriginal Education, EDU 211: Aboriginal Education & the Context for Professional Development. Sockbeson's poem, “Hear me in this concrete beating on my drum,” was a winning entry in the Word on the Street Poetry Project in 2018 and is sandblasted on a downtown Edmonton sidewalk as part of a permanent public art installation.

Philip Bryden, Q.C., is a Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Alberta and holds the TC Energy Chair in Administrative and Regulatory Law. From 2015-2019, Professor Bryden served as Deputy Minister of Justice and Solicitor General for Alberta. Prior to his work with the Alberta government, Professor Bryden was Dean of Law at the University of Alberta. Earlier in his academic career, Professor Bryden was a member of the Faculty of Law at the University of New Brunswick, where he served as Dean of Law. He began his academic career as a faculty member at the Faculty of Law of the University of British Columbia.