About
Lisa Austin is a Professor of Law at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, holding the Chair in Law and Technology. She serves as Associate Director at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society and is a Faculty Associate at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center. Previously, she co-founded the IT3 Lab at the University of Toronto, which conducted interdisciplinary research on privacy and transparency issues.
Professor Austin earned her BA &Sc from McMaster University (1994), MA from the University of Toronto (1995), LLB from the University of Toronto (1998), and PhD from the University of Toronto (2005). She was called to the Bar of Ontario in 2006 and previously served as law clerk to Mr. Justice Frank Iacobucci of the Supreme Court of Canada.
Her research spans data governance, privacy law, property law, and legal theory. Professor Austin has published in prestigious journals including Legal Theory, Law and Philosophy, Theoretical Inquiries in Law, and Canadian Journal of Law and Society. She co-edited Private Law and the Rule of Law (Oxford University Press, 2015), challenging the conventional understanding that the rule of law applies only to public law.
Professor Austin's scholarship consistently emphasizes the relationship between privacy, power dynamics, and legal frameworks, arguing that privacy is fundamentally about power rather than mere consent or harm prevention. Her recent work addresses pressing issues including the data governance gap during the COVID-19 pandemic, digital rethinking of constitutional privacy protections, and smart city data governance.
- 2017 President's Impact Award from the University of Toronto
Professor Austin actively engages in policy discussions, having submitted testimony before parliamentary committees on privacy legislation reform, including the Privacy Act and the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act. Her work bridges academic scholarship with practical policy impact, making her a leading voice in Canadian privacy law and technology governance.
