Emily Laidlaw

Emily Laidlaw is a Canada Research Chair in Cybersecurity Law and Associate Professor. She researches in the areas of technology regulation, cybersecurity and human rights, with a focus on platform regulation, online harms, privacy, freedom of expression and corporate social responsibility. She is author of the book Regulating Speech in Cyberspace: Gatekeepers, Human Rights and Corporate Responsibility (Cambridge University Press, 2015).

Prior to joining the University of Calgary in 2014, Dr. Laidlaw spent almost ten years in the United Kingdom where she completed her LLM and PhD at the London School of Economics and Political Science and held a tenure-track lectureship with the University of East Anglia Law School. Before undertaking postgraduate studies, Emily practised for several years in Canada as a litigator, and she is currently serving as Ethics Advisor to Calgary’s City Council.

Drawing from her years in the UK, Dr. Laidlaw’s research spans Canadian, UK, European and international law. As a scholar, she actively contributes to law reform and other advisory work to government and other bodies, with recent projects on online harms, mis- and dis-information, defamation law, intimate image abuse, intermediary liability, content moderation and privacy. She co-chaired the expert advisory panel on online safety appointed by the Government of Canada to advise on next steps for the development of legislation to address online harms. As a result of the impact of her work outside the academy, Dr. Laidlaw was recognized as a Peak Scholar in 2018.

Dr. Laidlaw engages widely in public discussions in her field, delighting in conversations with her students, with the public at events, whether at the library or online panels, conferences, judicial education and testimony before government.

Dr. Laidlaw is a network director of the Canadian Network on Information and Security and a member of the Institute for Security, Privacy and Information Assurance.