CPWO Research Seminar
Understanding and Addressing Online Harms Against Women and Girls through Research
Online spaces play a huge role in our everyday lives, offering connection, creativity, and community. Yet for many women and girls, these spaces can also bring real risks and harm. These Research Seminars open up a shared conversation about how research can help us understand these experiences and find practical ways to make digital spaces safer and more inclusive. Bringing together researchers, students, practitioners, and members of the wider community, the event is an opportunity to learn from one another, share insights, and explore how we can work collectively to create lasting change.
We are delighted to welcome Professor Jane Bailey and Ghania Amir Javed to lead this Research Seminar. Further details about the talk, the speaker’s biography, and a link to book a place are provided below.
Consent, Harm, Privacy and Equality: Assessing the Limits of Canadian Civil Recourse for Non-Consensual Distribution of Intimate Images
The profound consequences of intimate image abuse disproportionately harm women, girls and other gender-marginalized people, especially those affected by racism, homophobia, transphobia and other intersecting axes of oppression. Canadian law has responded to the privacy and equality harms of this form of sexualized violence with statutory and common law avenues of civil recourse for non-consensual distribution of intimate images (NCDI). But how are legal definitions of “intimate image”, “consent”, and “reasonable expectation of privacy” within these laws shaping access to justice? On April 21, join University of Ottawa Professor Jane Bailey and JD student Ghania Amir Javed for highlights from their evaluation of the Canadian civil NCDI case law, followed by discussion about what meaningful survivor-centred legal recourse for NCDI should look like.
About the Speakers
Jane Bailey is a full Professor of Law at uOttawa, who teaches Cyberfeminism, Technoprudence and Contracts. She was a 2025-2026 international Visiting Fellow at CPWO. Jane and Dr Jacquelyn Burkell co-lead Rethinking Consent in Light of Scientific Developments, a 4-year SSHRC-funded project focused on the limitations of the individual informed consent model for addressing the privacy and equality threats posed by emerging technologies such as AI. She previously co-led The eQuality Project, a 7-year initiative in which she led the stream on tech-facilitated violence. In 2021, Jane, Dr Asher Flynn and Dr Nicola Henry co-edited the Emerald International Handbook on Technology-facilitated Violence and Abuse, an open access publication.
Ghania Amir Javed is a JD candidate at the University of Ottawa, with a strong interest in the intersection of law, technology, and access to justice. She is a researcher on Professor Jane Bailey and Dr Jacquelyn Burkell’s Rethinking Consent in Light of Scientific Developments project, where she examines the limitations of traditional conceptions of consent, intimate image abuse, and the privacy and equality challenges posed by technological advancements.
