Dr Elizabeth Kirley teaches in the Master of Laws program at Osgoode Professional Development in the Criminal Law & Procedure and Privacy & Cybersecurity programs. As a Visiting Scholar at Osgoode’s Nathanson Centre for Transnational Human Rights, Crime, and Security (2022-24) she has completed one book project on pandemic law (Outsmarting the Next Pandemic: what COVID-19 can teach us, released in 2022) and a second book for University of Toronto Press (Big Crime, Big Policing: is it all about big money?) to be released in Fall, 2023. 

 

Dr Kirley is the recipient of the 2021 Excellence in Teaching Award from Osgoode Hall Law School. Prior teaching appointments include in Osgoode’s juris doctor program (Criminal Law, National Security Law, Crime in the Digital Age and Law and Policing); York University’s Sociology Department (organized crime and money laundering; the sociology of policing); the Faculty of Business and Law at Deakin University in Melbourne Australia (internet law and statutory interpretation); and as Assistant Professor of Criminology at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson).

 

Dr Kirley is called to the Ontario bar and has served Ontario’s Ministry of the Attorney General as criminal defence counsel, Assistant Crown Attorney and representative of the Office of the Children’s Lawyer. She holds PhD and LLM degrees from Osgoode, and a JD from the University of Western Ontario. Her life before law involved broadcast journalism for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

 

Dr Kirley’s PhD thesis, “Reputational Privacy and the Internet: a role for law?” has led to further research in social media law, cybercrime, and cognitive robotics related to journalism, defamation, national security, and evidentiary challenges raised by the emerging law of digital speech. Her work is published in several peer reviewed journals.