Visiting Researcher

Adetoun Ilumoka was born and raised in Nigeria, mainly in the city of Lagos where she went to primary and secondary school. She studied law at the University of Kent in the UK from 1978 – 1981.

She is a qualified Solicitor and Advocate of the Supreme Court of Nigeria, called to the Bar in June 1982. She obtained her LLM at the University of Warwick in the UK in 1985 and her Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver in May 2014.

Dr Ilumoka began her teaching career at the University of Jos in Plateau State, Nigeria, in 1984. There she taught Constitutional History, Law and Society, Jurisprudence and Legal Theory and Company Law. In 1990 she worked briefly as a legal consultant for Price Waterhouse and moved on to establish her own legal practice and consultancy firm – A.O. Ilumoka & Associates (AOIA) in 1991. Shortly after this, along with a group of colleagues, Dr Ilumoka established the Empowerment and Action Research Center (EMPARC) – a not-for-profit research and advocacy organization based in Lagos, Nigeria.

She was the Executive Director of this organization for 10 years. Under her leadership, EMPARC did pioneering work on human rights, social justice and women’s health policy, collaborating with colleagues from Asia, Latin America, the United States and Europe.

Dr Ilumoka moved to Canada in 2005 and did her Ph.D at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. She was the Daryl T Bean Professor of Law and Women’s Studies at Western University – from January 2010 until August 2012. Dr. Ilumoka has been the recipient of several international research fellowships at academic institutions in the United States. Her core research and teaching interests are in the areas of Jurisprudence and Legal Theory, Constitutional Law and Human Rights, Land Law and Gender and the Law.