The Centre for Law, Technology and Society is delighted to announce that PhD candidate Katie Szilagyihas been appointed as a tenure-track Assistant Professor at Robson Hall, the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Law, as of July 1, 2021. Professor Szilagyi will also then become an Associate Member of the Centre.
Katie Szilagyi has been a proud member of the University of Ottawa Centre for Law, Technology and Society’s community since 2009. As a 1L student, she began her research into law and technology issues through a Technoship with Professor Ian Kerr, Canada Research Chair in Ethics, Law & Technology. Under his expert guidance, she arrived early to the academic consideration of transformative topics including online privacy, autonomous weapons, and artificial intelligence in the law. Throughout her law school career, Katie Szilagyi collaborated with Dr. Kerr and his research team, developing expertise in analysing emergent technology through regulation, autonomy, and privacy lenses. She was also a successful moot court competitor, including uOttawa’s first-ever appearance at the Oxford International IP Moot in 2012.
Katie Szilagyi returned to the University of Ottawa in 2017, notably to pursue her PhD in Law, for which she was awarded the SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canadian Doctoral Scholarship, the Ontario Graduate Scholarship, and various uOttawa admissions scholarships and bursaries.
Her research is at the intersection of technology law and legal theory, in an effort to trace the impacts of predictive analytics and algorithmic decision-making on the organizing force of the Rule of Law. She has published and presented on the transformative impacts of blockchain technology on the legal landscape and on the international humanitarian law implications of autonomous weapons systems on the battlefield. She was also a 2019 Global Fellow of the Institute of Technology and Society in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Until her appointment, Katie Szilagyi was a Part-Time Professor in the Faculty of Law, Common Law Section, where she taught first-year Contracts, and two upper-year technology law seminars of her own design: Law, Technology, and the Future; and Privacy Law. Together with Professor Jeremy de Beer, she also served as co-coach of our three intellectual property moot teams, the Fox IP Moot, the Oxford IP Moot, and the Copyright Policy Moot.
She was also involved in many research projects. As a member of Dr Jason Millar’s interdisciplinary lab CRAiEDL, she works with engineering and law students on innovative research. With the OpenAir Research Network, she is involved in cross-cultural interdisciplinary research on AI and smart farming. In 2020, she served as a co-chair for the We Robot Conference, which was delivered virtually through a creative online format.
In 2017, Katie Szilagyi completed her LLM in Law & Technology at Tel Aviv University. She also holds her JD from uOttawa (2012) and a BSc in Biosystems Engineering from the University of Manitoba (2008).
Before becoming an academic, she clerked for Justice Marc Nadon and Justice Wyman W. Webb at the Federal Court of Appeal, worked for several years in commercial litigation at a large Toronto law firm, and worked in life sciences governance with the Manitoba public service.
Katie Szilagyi will start her career at the University of Manitoba on July 1, 2021, on which date she will also become an Associate Member of the University of Ottawa Centre for Law, Technology and Society, following a unanimous anticipated motion of the Management Committee.
Congratulations to Katie Szilagyi!