Biography
Professor Langer is prairie-born and raised. She began her teaching career under the sunny skies of Saskatchewan where she taught at Univ. of Sask and Univ. of Regina for several years before returning to school and obtaining her PH.D. at Osgoode Hall Law School, Toronto. Dr. Langer has worked as a consultant in the fields of human rights, domestic violence, female offenders, and the sex trades. She is currently Chair of the Laurentian University Research Ethics Board and a member of the Board of Directors of the John Howard Society. She has taught in the Laurentian University Law & Justice Department since 2003, and now loves the beauty of the near-north region of Ontario.
Education
- BA
- LLB
- LLM
- PHD
Research
Dr. Langer has particular interests in gender and the law, privacy law and new technologies, and law and mental illness. Her current research focus combines several of these interests, as she pursues a multidisciplinary research agenda about mental disorders and the law. Her recent scholarship interrogates the impact of gendered conceptualizations of mental disorder on legal liability, culpability, guilt, risk and punishment. She teaches a variety of courses across the Law & Justice programme, including Law and Popular Culture, Women in Conflict with the Law, Themes in Criminal Law, Advanced Topics in Criminal Justice Theory, Public Law and Interpersonal Dispute Resolution.
Publications
- "Gender, Mental Disorder and Law at the Borderline: Complex Entanglements of Victimization and Risk" (2015) Psychiatry Psychology and Law
- “That Time of Month:” Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder in the Criminal Law-Another Look” (2012) 1 International Journal of Criminology and Sociology
- “Mother of Sorrows: Postpartum Mental Disorder and the Law across Five Jurisdictions” (2012) Psychiatry Psychology and Law 358-388
- ‘A Dignified and Caring Mother:’ An Examination of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy Case Law” (2009) 16:2 Psychiatry Psychology and Law 217-239.
- Defining Rights and Wrongs: Bureaucracy, Human Rights and Public Accountability (UBC Press, Law and Society series, 2007)
- R. Langer, “The Juridification and Technicisation of Alternate Dispute Resolution Practices,” (1998) 13 Can. Journal of Law and Society 169.