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 21 full-time regular professors (and seven associate members) teaching and researching law and policy in the fields of technology, innovation, security, privacy, information, communication, intellectual property, science, and traditional knowledge.
About the New Faculty Members
Dr. Elizabeth Dubois is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication, Faculty of Arts. She completed her doctorate in Information, Communication and the Social Sciences at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford. Her work considers how technology may be leveraged to increase democratic accountability and engagement. Her current research examines the political opinion formation process and the role of automation such as social media bots. Dr. Dubois is a Fellow at the Public Policy Forum of Canada and recently co-hosted the Connected Canada 150 conference which brought together academics, policymakers, and civil society to set a research agenda for understanding citizenship in a digital media environment.
Dr. Michael Pal is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law, Common Law Section, where he is also the Director of the Public Law Group. He has a law degree and doctorate in law from the University of Toronto, where he was a Pierre-Elliot Trudeau Foundation Scholar, and an LLM in Legal Theory from the NYU School of Law. He is also a Fellow at the Mowat Centre in the School of Public Policy at the University of Toronto, and, in 2017, was appointed as a Commissioner with the Far North Electoral Boundaries Commission for the Province of Ontario. Professor Pal has advised governments at all levels, as well as election commissions, and electoral boundary commissions. His work in law and technology involves research on how election law can respond to the transformation of politics brought about by the use of big data, social media, and new technologies.
About the New Associate Members
Dr. Erika Kraemer-Mbula is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) and a co-leader of the Open AIR network. Her research interests are science and technology policy analysis and innovation systems in connection to sustainable and equitable development in Africa.
Dr. Tracey P. Lauriault is an Assistant Professor of Critical Media and Big Data in the School of Journalism and Communication, Communication Studies, at Carleton University. An expert of Big Data, Data as Media, Data Infrastructures, and Open Data, her research focus is part of a new field entitled critical data studies and she is actively engaged in public policy research as it pertains to data with civil society and government. She is engaged in the promotion of evidence-informed decision-making as part of democratic deliberation and actively advances those issues within civil society organizations, academic institutions and government.
Dr. Jason Millar is an Interdisciplinary Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society at Stanford University, and Apple Inc. His research looks at the ethics and governance of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), with a focus on developing ethically informed design methodologies for use in the design of autonomous cars, and social and military robotics. He has a PhD in philosophy from Queen's University, as well as a degree in engineering physics. Before joining Stanford, Dr. Millar was a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre and continues to work closely with Dr. Ian Kerr.
Dr. Caroline Ncube is a Full Professor at the Department of Commercial Law at the University of Cape Town, where she teaches IP law at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and a co-leader of the Open AIR network. Dr. Ncube holds a PhD, LLM, and LLB. She has published widely in IP law on aspects including copyright law and access to works for under-served markets including persons with disabilities. She is one of the two founding co-editors of the Journal of Intellectual Property Law, the first IP law specific journal in South Africa, and serves on the editorial boards of several other journals. Dr. Ncube’s research also includes the protection of indigenous knowledge and intellectual property.
Dr. Nagla Rizk is Professor of Economics, Founding Director of Access to Knowledge for Development Center (A2K4D) at the American University in Cairo (AUC) and a co-leader of the Open AIR network. Her area of research is the economics of knowledge, technology, and development with a focus on entrepreneurship, innovation, intellectual property, business models and inclusion in the digital economy.
Dr. Isaac Rutenberg is the Director of the Center for Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law (CIPIT) at Strathmore Law School in Nairobi, Kenya, and is a co-leader of the Open AIR network. His research in intellectual property (IP) focuses on whether current IP systems are suitable for innovators and entrepreneurs in the local context. His research in ICT looks at various methods of information controls used by private and public actors.
Dr. Tobias Schonwetter is the Director of the Intellectual Property Unit (IP Unit), Faculty of Law, University of Cape Town (UCT) as well as a co-leader of the Open AIR network. He specializes in intellectual property, looking particularly at the relationship between intellectual property, innovation, and development. Dr. Schonwetter has written numerous articles on IP matters and presented at various national and international conferences.