University of Georgia School of Law Professor Pamela Foohey’s co-authored book, Debt’s Grip: Risk and Consumer Bankruptcy (University of California Press, 2025), served as the central topic of a recent conference hosted by Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, Canada.

Organized by Stephanie Ben-Ishai, Full Professor, York University Distinguished Research Professor, and York Research Chair in Law, Finance and Debt, the panels “…invite[d] Canadian scholars, policymakers, and practitioners to rethink the role of bankruptcy and insolvency law not just as technical legal regimes, but as critical indicators of how modern societies allocate risk, security, and dignity in everyday economic life.”

Foohey joined Georgia Law faculty as a full professor in 2024. She currently holds the Allen Post Professorship and teaches Bankruptcy, Secured Transactions and a Bankruptcy Practice Seminar. Specializing in bankruptcy, commercial law, consumer finance and business law, Foohey’s scholarship primarily involves empirical studies of bankruptcy and related parts of the legal system. She presently is a co-investigator on the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, a long-term research project studying persons who file bankruptcy. Data from this project serve as the basis of her co-authored book Debt’s Grip: Risk and Consumer Bankruptcy (University of California Press, 2025). Her work in business bankruptcy focuses on nonprofit entities, with a particular emphasis on how religious organizations use bankruptcy. Data from this project are included in her forthcoming book Forgive Us Our Debts: How Black Churches Use Bankruptcy to Survive (University of Chicago Press, September 2026).