Jeff Spring
Part Time Instructor
Email: jeff.spring@dal.ca
Mailing Address:
- Human Rights
- Global Justice
- Political Philosophy
- Ethics & Value Theory
- Indigenous Justice Issues
Education:
BA, Law and Politics, Carleton University
MA, Human Rights, University of London
MA, Philosophy, University of Guelph
PhD, Philosophy, Western University
Brief Biography
I have been teaching for eighteen years, primarily courses on moral, legal, and political philosophy, global justice, human rights, Indigenous justice issues, and more than a dozen courses in critical thinking. In 2013-2014 I was a limited-term Assistant Professor of Politics and Philosophy at UBC Okanagan. From 2015-2020 I was an Assistant Professor of Political Theory at StFX. From 2020 to the present I taught courses for SMU, UPEI, Winnipeg, Acadia, and Wilfrid Laurier. From July 2025 to July 2026 I worked as a part-time Academic Coordinator, Philosophy, for Athabasca University.
My broad work on rights-based approaches to justice intersects with, and critically integrates, the role domestic and international law play in securing and realizing a rights-respecting society. My research seeks to clarify what respect for rights is as a moral, legal, social, and political goal, so often taken for granted. A decolonized world that features widespread respect for a robust set of universal rights, as part of its shared norms, commitments, and practices, approximates at least a minimally just social and global order.
During my day job, I work as a Senior Labour Board Officer for the Nova Scotia Labour Board. I have previously worked as a Human Rights Officer at the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission and as an Investigator with the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Nova Scotia.
Selected Publications:
Spring, Jeff. ‘On the Colonialism and Decolonization of Human Rights.’ Journal of Human Rights Practice, 18(2): 1-11. July 2026.
Spring, Jeff. ‘Human Rights for the State and the State for Human Rights.’ Academia Letters, Article 2022: 1-6. July 2021.
Book review of The Human Rights State: Justice Within and Beyond Sovereign Nations by Benjamin Gregg. The Review of Politics, 80(2): 388-390. 2018.
Book review of Poverty, Agency, and Human Rights ed. Diana Tietjens Meyers. Journal of Moral Philosophy, 14(5): 612-615. 2017.
Book review of Strangers in Our Midst: The Political Philosophy of Immigration by David Miller. Contemporary Political Theory, 17(1): 1-4. 2017.
Spring, Jeff. ‘On the Rescuing of Rights in Feminist Ethics.’ Praxis Journal of Philosophy, 3(1): 66-83. 2011.
Spring, Jeff. ‘Rights and Well-Being in Amartya Sen’s Value Theory.’ The Journal of Value Inquiry, 45(1): 13-26. 2011.