The Centre for Law, Technology and Society is the leading Canadian research group in Law and Technology. In welcoming those scholars, the Centre strengthens its policy expertise, now including 19 full-time regular professors teaching and researching law and policy in the fields of innovation, technology, security, privacy, information, communication, intellectual property, science, and traditional knowledge.
About the New Scholars
Dr. Wolfgang Alschner is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law, Common Law Section. He holds a PhD in International Law from the Graduate Institute in Geneva and a Master of Law from Stanford University. Professor Alschner combines international economic law expertise and big data science to conduct innovative research on international investment and trade law. At the intersection of legal and empirical scholarship, his work strives to assist policy-makers and legal practitioners to make sense of the increasingly complex structures of international economic law. He is a co-founder of the legal analytics platform MappingInvestmentTreaties.com and is an active contributor to the legal tech and legal informatics communities through his work on the computational analysis of international law.
Dr. Suzanne Bouclin is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, Common Law Section. She holds a doctorate in Law from McGill University. Her dissertation examined law through the lexicon, theories and methods of film studies. Professor Bouclin is also a SSRCH Insight Development Grant Recipient for her research on HomelessNation, Social Networking Sites and Legal Consciousness. In recent research conducted with Professor Amy Salyzyn and Professor Jena McGill, and with support from a SSHRC Knowledge Synthesis Grant, Professor Bouclin explored risks and opportunities relating to the use of mobile and web-based apps to enhance access to justice.
Thomas Burelli is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law, Civil Law Section. He is a graduate in Intellectual Property and Environmental Law and has participated in several field missions in French overseas territories on the theme of access and use of genetic resources and related traditional knowledge. His research focuses on the circulation of traditional knowledge and the relationships between scientists and indigenous and local communities in Canada and France. In particular, his research examines the different instruments and practices developed for traditional and non-indigenous traditional knowledge exchange relations.
Dr. Mary Cavanagh is an Associate Professor at the School of Information Studies (Faculty of Arts) and has been its Acting Director in 2016-2017. She holds a PhD in Information Studies from the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on public libraries, social media engagement, and information networks and practices. She is a co-principal investigator, with Professor Marina Pavlovic, on a Law Foundation of Ontario Project on Legal Information Seeking Behaviour of telecommunications consumers.
Jena McGill is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, Common Law Section. She graduated from the joint LL.B./M.A. program of the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law and the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University, and completed her graduate studies in law (LL.M.) at Yale Law School, where she focused on constitutional law, human rights and equality issues. Professor McGill’s research considers the role of new technologies in facilitating access to justice, particularly for marginalized and equality-seeking communities in Canada. A recent project conducted with Professors Suzanne Bouclin and Amy Salyzyn, and with support from a SSHRC Knowledge Synthesis Grant, explored risks and opportunities relating to the use of mobile and web-based legal apps to enhance access to justice. The next phase of this project will consider ways to mitigate the specific privacy risks inherent in legal apps.
Amy Salyzyn is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law, Common Law Section. She received her LL.M. from Yale Law School and her J.D. from the University of Toronto Law School. She has also served as a judicial law clerk at the Court of Appeal for Ontario and has practiced at a Toronto litigation boutique. Professor Salyzyn's research interests include law and technology, legal services innovation and civil justice reform. She is currently a co-investigator on a $2.5 million SSHRC Major Collaborative Research Initiative (MCRI) grant for a project titled “Repenser le droit processuel: vers une cyberjustice” (“Rethinking Procedural Law: Towards a Cyberjustice”). In recent research conducted with Professor Suzanne Bouclin and Professor Jena McGill, and with support from a SSHRC Knowledge Synthesis Grant, Professor Salyzyn explored risks and opportunities relating to the use of mobile and web-based apps to enhance access to justice.This research team, along with Professor Teresa Scassa, has continued its work relating to legal apps with new funding from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada that will support the development of A Privacy Code of Practice for Legal Apps.