About the IAPP

Dr. Valerie Steeves is a Full Professor in the Department of Criminology at the University of Ottawa in Ottawa, Canada. Her main area of research is human rights and technology issues. She is the principal investigator of The eQuality Project, an 8-year partnership initiative funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, focused on the ways in which big data practices contribute to a discriminatory environment that sets young people up for conflict and harassment. In addition, Dr. Steeves is a co-investigator in two other SSHRC funded partnerships: one looking at Big Data Surveillance and the other focused on addressing Rape Culture on University Campuses. She was also the lead researcher on MediaSmart’s Young Canadians in a Wired World Research Project, a long-term project that has been tracking young people’s experiences with networked technologies, from 2004-2021. Dr. Steeves has written and spoken extensively on privacy from a human rights perspective, and is an active participant in the privacy policy making process in Canada and in international fora.