Dr Elizabeth Kirley is a 2021-22 Fellow of the Nathanson Centre for Transnational Human Rights, Crime, and Security at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University in Toronto. She is a course director for criminal law, digital crime, pandemic law, and nonverbal evidence in the Master of Laws program at Osgoode Professional Development where she is the recipient of the 2021 Excellence in Teaching Award. She was a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Business and Law at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia from 2017 to 2019  She is called to the Ontario bar and has served as Assistant Crown  Attorney, criminal defence counsel, and representative of the Office of the Children's Lawyer for the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General. She holds PhD and LL.M degrees from Osgoode, and a JD from the University of Western Ontario. Her life before law involved broadcast journalism for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. 

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Elizabeth's more recent research focuses on technology law, cybercrime, and cognitive robotics as they engage issues of global health, reputation privacy, national security, and evidentiary challenges raised by the emerging law of digital  speech. In a series of publications, co-authored with Dr Marilyn McMahon, the emoji is examined as precursor of digital speech, a tool of crime, and a means of conveying human diversity on social media. Elizabeth is the co-editor of two books, Outsmarting the Next Pandemic: what COVID can teach, (Routledge UK 2022) and Big Policing and Big Crime: is it all about the money?  (UTP forthcoming)

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Elizabeth has received various distinctions for her work, including a Canada/France Foreign Government Award, European Union Centre of Excellence Award, the Oxford Internet Institute Summer Doctoral Program, the Osnabruck University Law & Culture Award, and two Nathanson Centre Graduate Fellowships at Osgoode Hall Law School. She has taught, conducted research, and presented her work at different universities including the American Graduate School of Paris; l' École des hautes études commerciales de Paris;Sciences-Po University (Paris), University of Toronto Munk School of Global Affairs; Quello School of Communications at Michigan State University; University of Limerick Faculty of Law, Ireland; Duquesne School of Law, Pennsylvania; the Instituto Universitario de Lisboa in Portugal and the Academy of Legal Studies in Business in Montreal.