Suzie Dunn is a PhD student and part-time professor at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law. Her research centers on the intersections of gender, equality, technology and the law, with a specific focus the non-consensual distribution of intimate images, deepfakes, and impersonation in digital spaces. She was awarded the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Scholarship for her PhD research. In 2017, she completed her Master of Laws, during which she conducted a multi-jurisdictional analysis of laws related to the non-consensual distribution of intimate images and was awarded the Shirley Greenberg Foundation Scholarship for feminist legal studies.
In 2018, she advised the Digital Inclusion Lab at Global Affairs Canada in drafting two international commitments to end gender-based violence in digital contexts, including the G7’s “Charlevoix Commitment to End Sexual and Gender-Based Violence, Abuse and Harassment in Digital Contexts” and the United Nations Human Rights Committee’s resolution titled “Accelerating Efforts to Eliminate Violence against Women and Girls: Preventing and Responding to Violence against Women and Girls in Digital Contexts”, both of which were adopted that year.
Suzie Dunn was part of the legal team that supported CIPPIC’s intervention in R v Jarvis. This case involved a high-school teacher who had used a secret camera pen to take images of his female students for a sexual purpose. In its 2019 decision, the Supreme Court of Canada clarified the term “reasonable expectation of privacy” in the criminal voyeurism provision. The SCC found that the girls in this case did have a reasonable expectation of privacy in those circumstances and set out a contextual analysis for future cases. This was a key case in the jurisprudence related to privacy and image-based abuse.
Outside of academia, Suzie Dunn has worked with several national non-profit organizations that address gender equality. Between 2017-2019 she acted as the co-chair of the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action, which advocates for women’s rights in Canada by utilizing international human rights treaties. She currently sits on advisory committee with the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund that addresses issues related to technology facilitated violence.
She was called to the Ontario bar in 2016.