Andrea Slane, PhD

IDRR Social Scientist
Professor, Legal Studies
Faculty of Social Science and Humanities
Ontario Tech University
andrea.slane@ontariotechu.ca

Dr. Andrea Slane is a Professor in Legal Studies at Ontario Tech University. Her research focuses on law’s interface with digital communication and information technologies, including the nature of privacy interests and appropriate limits to privacy protection; legal approaches to various forms of online and other digital exploitation of vulnerable people; and personality rights and other legal and policy methods to protect autonomy, dignity and identity.  Her work and teaching centrally concerns the social impact of current and emerging information and communication technologies, and the legal and policy protections needed to ensure their safe, equitable and principled use.  

Dr. Slane joined the Faculty of Social Science and Humanities at Ontario Tech in 2009, prior to which she was Executive Director of the Center for Innovation Law and Policy at the University of Toronto, Faculty of Law. She received her Juris Doctor degree, with honors, from the University of Toronto in 2003, and was called to the Ontario bar in 2004. Dr. Slane practiced trademark, copyright, privacy and technology law at a large downtown law firm in Toronto before returning to academia in 2006. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California in San Diego, and worked as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia from 1995 to 2000.

Dr. Slane uses a variety of methodologies in her research, including doctrinal legal analysis, textual analysis, and qualitative social research methods that directly engage the affected technology users and other stakeholders. Three major SSHRC funded research projects are currently underway, each featuring interdisciplinary teams where Dr. Slane’s role is to grapple with the legal and ethical issues raised by technology use in these domains: 1) anthropomorphic social support technologies being developed for and marketed to seniors (principal investigator); 2) online sexual harassment and exploitation, especially of children and youth (co-applicant); and 3) law enforcement use of image matching technologies (e.g. facial recognition), with a focus on developing meaningful public consultation processes to inform oversight of police procurement and use of investigative technologies (principal investigator).

View Andrea Slane's Faculty of Social Science and Humanities profile.