Prof. Jena McGill is a Faculty member at the Centre for Law, Technology, and Society and an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law, Common Law Section at the University of Ottawa.
Professor Jena McGill researches in the areas of Canadian constitutional law (with a focus on equality law); gender and sexuality; women, peace and security in international law; feminist legal theory; and legal technology as a vehicle to promote access to justice. Her work on section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has been cited by the Supreme Court of Canada.
Professor McGill was a Visiting Scholar at the Kent Centre for Law, Gender and Sexuality at Kent Law School in Canterbury, UK in 2014. In 2016, she, alongside co-investigators Professors Suzanne Bouclin and Amy Salyzyn, was the Principal Investigator on a SSHRC-funded project titled Emerging Technological Solutions to Access to Justice Problems: Opportunities and Risks of Mobile and Web-based Apps, exploring the risks and opportunities of using mobile and web-based apps to enhance access to justice. In 2017-2019, the same research team, along with Professor Teresa Scassa and with funding support from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, developed A Best Practices Guide for Improving Privacy Practices for Legal Apps.
Professor McGill is a graduate of the joint J.D./M.A. program of the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law and the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University, and she served as a law clerk to Justice Louise Charron at the Supreme Court of Canada. She worked at the United Nations International Law Commission in Geneva, Switzerland, and completed her graduate studies in law (LL.M.) at Yale Law School, where she focused on human rights and equality issues related to gender, sexuality and the law. Professor McGill is a member of the Law Society of Ontario.