I am training as a socio-legal scholar and historian of law, gender, and toxicity in twentieth-century Canada. Currently, I am pursuing a PhD in law at Kent Law School at the University of Kent, in Canterbury, UK. My thesis explores Canadian cosmetics regulation, with a particular focus on histories of cosmetic product labelling. Using previously restricted archival materials, as well as interviews, I examine the gendered regulatory practices, ideas, and networks giving rise to the elements composing modern-day Canadian cosmetic labels (including product claims, directions for use, warnings, and ingredient lists). In 2018, I obtained an LLM from Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in Toronto, Canada, with an award-nominated thesis entitled Toxic Enactments: Materializing Estrogen and Regulation Under Canada’s Food and Drugs Act, 1939-1953. Part of that thesis has been published in Catalyst: feminism, theory, technoscience as Potency and Power: Estrogen, Cosmetics, and Labelling in Canadian Regulatory Practices, 1939-1953. Prior to commencing graduate studies, I practiced for 13 years as a barrister and solicitor in Canada, primarily in environmental law.
twitter: @lara_tessaro