Isabelle Perreault, Associate Professor at the Department of Criminology, is the Director of Biopolitical issues and minority groups, the CIRCEM’s 7th research axis.
Biopolitical issues and minority groups
This research axis focuses on the study of the right for a citizen to dispose of his or her life, body and sexuality. The study of this "right" can only enter into conversation with a general change that can be seen in society, where there has been a break with former moralizing explanations, often religious, for the benefit of non-moralizing interpretations of what is normal and what is not. In particular, we can think of suicide, assisted suicide, induced abortion, and assisted procreation, sterilization, non-procreative sexual practices, voluntary and voluntary physical changes and others subjects.
It is therefore at the crossroads of eugenic (positive and negative) policies, the right to life and death and non-procreative sexual practices that this research axis will allow us to question Canadian biopolitics from traces found in archives, traces that emanate from the contact between an individual and a medical, judicial or police institution. We will pay close attention to minority groups, such as the francophone minority, and to groups minoritized by their living conditions and histories.
About CIRCEM
The Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Citizenship and Minorities (CIRCEM) is one of the major research centers of the Faculty of Social Sciences and the University of Ottawa. The Centre is a hub for researchers concerned with citizenship and minority issues. It has emerged as a dynamic and plural environment whose priority is to promote exchanges and interdisciplinary research within a francophone intellectual space. CIRCEM thus closely merges research and intellectual life.