Yaëll Emerich and Ignacio Cofone named Canada Research Chairs
The Faculty of Law is pleased to announce that two of its scholars have been named Canada Research Chairs. Professor Yaëll Emerich has been named the Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Transsystemic Property & Sustainable Communities and Professor Ignacio Cofone has been named the Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Artificial Intelligence Law & Data Governance.
Professor Emerich holds a joint PhD from Université de Montréal and Université de Lyon. She joined the Faculty of Law in 2003 and has been a full professor since 2020. She is an associate member of the International Academy of Comparative Law. Professor Emerich was the director of the Paul-André Crépeau Centre for Private and Comparative Law from 2016 to 2018, after serving as acting director in 2013. Her monograph Conceptualising Property Law: Integrating Common Law and Civil Law Traditions won the Canadian Bar Association’s Walter Owen Book Prize in 2018 and the Fondation du Barreau du Québec’s Concours Juridique (treatise and monograph category) in 2019. It also received an honourable mention from the International Academy of Comparative Law. Her research explores all facets of private and comparative law, legal theory, and the relationship between law and language.
Professor Cofone holds a joint PhD (rer pol) from Erasmus University Rotterdam and Hamburg University, where he was an Erasmus Mundus Fellow, and a JSD from Yale Law School. He joined the Faculty of Law as an assistant professor in 2018. He has received the Canadian Institute for the Administration of Justice Charles Gonthier Fellowship (2019), the Future of Privacy Forum Best Privacy Papers for Policymakers Award (2019), and the Council of Europe Stefano Rodota Award Special Mention (2021). He was named a Norton Rose Fulbright Faculty Scholar for 2020-2021. His research focuses on privacy harms and on algorithmic decision-making to explore how the law should adapt to technological and social change.
“We are delighted to see these appointments recognize these colleagues’ outstanding achievements and support their continuing innovative research,” said Dean Robert Leckey. “Professor Emerich’s and Professor Cofone’s work, like that of so many of our colleagues, exemplifies McGill Law’s commitment to applying legal expertise and imagination to some of our world’s most pressing challenges.”
About Canada Research Chairs
The Canada Research Chairs Program (CRCP) is part of a national strategy to make Canada one of the world’s top countries in research and development. Chairholders aim to achieve research excellence in engineering and the natural sciences, health sciences, humanities, and social sciences. Find out more about the program