Dr Tamara Amoroso Gonsalves

Dr. Tamara Gonsalves Law, Gender, and Human Rights Scholar | Associate Researcher, University of British Columbia

Dr. Tamara Gonsalves is a Brazilian legal scholar based in Canada whose work bridges law, gender studies, and human rights. She is an Associate Researcher at the University of British Columbia and holds a Ph.D. in Law (Law and Society Program) from the University of Victoria (Canada), a postdoctoral fellowship from the Université de Montréal, an M.A. in Human Rights from the University of São Paulo (USP), and an LL.B. from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP). She also completed a Graduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education at the University of Victoria.

With more than two decades of experience in feminist legal research, Dr. Gonsalves has been deeply involved in advocacy, policy development, and scholarship addressing diverse issues — including the regulation of advertising, ultra-processed food labelling, and sexist media representation, as well as sexual and reproductive rights, transnational feminist activism, and gender-based violence.

She has been a member of CLADEM/Brazil (Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women’s Rights) for 21 years (currently on leave) and has collaborated with the Gender Studies Center (NEMGE/USP), the Centre for Global Studies at the University of Victoria, and the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia University in Montreal. Her academic and activist work focuses on gender-based violence, reproductive rights, institutional violence, and the Inter-American human rights system, combining critical, comparative, transsystemic, and intersectional perspectives across Latin American and Canadian contexts.

Dr. Gonsalves is the editor of the trilingual, interdisciplinary volume Parental Alienation: A New Form of Gender-Based Violence Against Women and Children in Latin America and the Caribbean, published by CLADEM in partnership with Equality Now, the Global Campaign for Equality in Family Law, and the University of São Paulo Faculty of Law (Ribeirão Preto). The book brings together contributions from scholars, jurists, and mothers affected by accusations of “parental alienation,” exposing how this pseudo- psychological concept has been weaponized to silence survivors and reinforce patriarchal norms under the guise of “family unity.”

Access the full text here:

Portuguese edition: Alienação parental: uma nova forma de violência de gênero ontra mulheres e crianças na América Latina e Caribe – link

Spanish edition: Alienación parental: una nueva forma de violencia de género contra mujeres, niñas y niños en América Latina y el Caribe – link

English edition: Parental Alienation: A New Form of Gender-Based Violence Against Women and Children in Latin America and the Caribbean – link

Her ongoing research explores gendered harms in judicial processes, feminist international human rights law, and institutional accountability in cases involving state complicity in gender-based violence. She actively engages in interdisciplinary collaborations promoting gender-sensitive legal practice, judicial reform, and feminist pedagogy.

Dr. Gonsalves publishes in Portuguese, Spanish, and English, and collaborates with academic institutions, civil society organizations, and policy networks across Latin America, Canada, and beyond.

More information: www.tamaragonsalves.com

‍