Ummni Khan

Ummni Khan holds a doctorate in Law from the University of Toronto, along with a Master’s in Law from the University of Michigan, a J.D. from Osgoode Hall Law School, and a Master’s in English Literature from York University. She is an Associate Professor at Carleton University in the Department of Law and Legal Studies, and is crossed with Sociology and the Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice.

Her research focuses on the construction and regulation of stigmatized sexuality in law, feminism, social science, psych discourses and popular culture. She is particularly interested in teasing out how gender, race, class, disability, age, nationality and other markers of difference, intersect with sexual hierarchies. She has written on a variety of topics, including BDSM/kink, sex work, so-called “rapey” music, Canadian identity, feminist praxis and trans rights. A recurring theme in her work presents pleasure as an affective challenge to oppressive power structures. Her book, Vicarious Kinks: Sadomasochism in the Socio-Legal Imaginary (2014), examines how regulation of consensual sadomasochism rests on problematic ideological claims that engage with psychiatry, anti-sm feminism and film.

She has received a number of grants and awards including a Visiting Fellowship at the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia University, a SSHRC Insight Development Grant, and Carleton’s Faculty of Public Affairs Research Excellence Award. Her scholarship on the harmful impact of sex work criminalization has recently been cited by the Supreme Court of Canada.