“I decided to do this magazine after learning that fellow hockey scholar Dr. Courtney Szto does something similar in her Kinesiology course at Queen’s University,” Dennie explained. “I followed Courtney’s lead because I thought it was really cool that students were able to showcase their hard work with a tangible research output at the end of the course that they can share with family, friends, and employers.”

Dennie, who joined the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Law in 2021, holds a BA in law and justice from Laurentian University, a JD from the Université de Moncton, a Master of Arts in Sociology from Laurentian University, and is currently completing a PhD at the University of Calgary. Her doctoral research, funded by SSHRC and Sport Canada, is an examination of participant liability and compensation for intentionally or negligently injured hockey players.  She has published in this area with articles touching on ice hockey violence, legal complexities of sports injuries, as well as articles related to multiculturalism and ice hockey. She started teaching the Sports Law course in the winter term of 2023.

Articles included in the magazine come from class assignments that first underwent rigorous peer review of classmates. Even the reviewing was part of the coursework, with each student responsible for reviewing four to five articles written by their peers before publication in the magazine.

“I thought it would produce high quality work since they knew their magazine contributions would be made public and I can honestly say any expectations I had going in were greatly exceeded,” said Dennie. “There was a lot of excitement around this in class and so many great ideas were shared among the class that culminated into the magazine you see now.”

The project was funded through the Law Endowment Fund and the Desautels Centre for Private Enterprise and the Law to help with costs of design and printing. “I remain grateful for their support,” said Dennie.

The inaugural issue of Robson Rundown: Navigating the field of sports law is now available for download from Dennie’s sports law research blog, Sports and the Law in Canada.