Vice-President, Research & Innovation, Les Jacobs
Professor Les Jacobs is currently Vice-President, Research and Innovation at Ontario Tech University, which he joined in 2019 after a long tenure as Professor at York University. With his leadership, Ontario Tech University has been designated for the past three years as Canada’s Research University of the Year among smaller universities and now ranks among the top research universities in Canada.
Dr. Jacobs is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC), the highest honour for a Canadian scholar, appointed in 2017 in recognition of being one of the world’s leading experts on large scale research projects in the justice system, with a focus in particular on human rights and access to justice involving data science and more broadly innovative theoretical, quantitative and policy contributions to legal research. Professor Jacobs previously held the York Research Chair in Human Rights and Access to Justice (Tier 1) leading the Access to Justice Data Science Lab. He was the founding Director of the York Centre for Public Policy & Law and founding Academic Director of the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice at Osgoode Hall Law School, and served for a long period as the Director of the Institute for Social Research and as the Academic Director of the Statistics Canada Data Research Centre. He completed his DPhil at Oxford University.
Dr. Jacobs initially joined York University after having held full-time teaching positions at the University of British Columbia and Magdalen College, Oxford University. He has concurrently held a range of visiting appointments including at University of California, Berkeley, Harvard Law School, University of British Columbia, Wolfson College, Oxford, Emory University, Waseda University Law School (Tokyo) and the Law Commission of Canada. He was the Fulbright Distinguished Research Chair in Canada-United States Relations at the Woodrow Wilson Center (Washington) in 2016, Senior Visiting Fellow in Law at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy in 2018, and most recently elected Visiting Fellow at Trinity College, University of Oxford in 2025.
Professor Jacobs is a leading international expert in interdisciplinary socio-legal data science, theoretical and policy work on human rights and the justice system and applied research methods in the justice system. Over the past two decades, he has received more than $30 million in research funding, employing hundreds of students. His large-scale data science socio-legal research projects focus on racial profiling, policing, access to justice, human rights and equality of opportunity. He has produced numerous books, including Rights and Deprivation (Oxford University Press, 1993, ebook edition 2012), Workfare: Does it work? Is it Fair? (Renouf/IRPP, 1995), The Democratic Vision of Politics (Simon & Schuster, 1997), Pursuing Equal Opportunities: The Theory and Practice of Egalitarian Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2004; ebook edition 2011), Balancing Competing Human Rights in a Diverse Society (University of Toronto Press/Irwin Law Books, 2012), Linking Global Trade and Human Rights: New Policy Space in Hard Economic Times (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Privacy Rights in the Global Digital Economy: Legal Problems and Canadian Paths to Justice (University of Toronto Press/Irwin Law Books, 2014), Racial Profiling and Human Rights: the new legal landscape in Canada (University of Toronto Press/Irwin Law Books, 2018), Grey Zones in International Economic Law and Global Governance (UBC Press, 2018), The Justice Crisis: The value and cost of access to law (UBC Press, 2020), Global Health Security in China, India, and Japan: Assessing Sustainable Development Goals (UBC Press, 2022) and Against Post-Liberal Courts and Justice (Springer Nature/Palgrave MacMillan, 2024). Several of his books have been translated into other languages.
He serves on many broader public sector research advisory boards and is currently the Director of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency Collaborating Centre for Canada. He has authored major expert reports for many organizations including the Law Commission of Canada, Ontario Human Rights Commission, Legal Aid Ontario, Community Legal Education Ontario, York Region Data Consortium, Ontario Literacy Coalition, Consumer Council of Canada, Windsor Police Service, Toronto Police Service, Peel Regional Police Service, Waterloo Regional Police Service, Industry Canada, International Trade and Labour Program (HRSD Canada), Ottawa Police Service, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and Elections Canada. In 2017, he served as Principal Consultant for the Cabinet Office for the development of the race data collection framework for the Government of Ontario and the Broader Public Sector, which was embedded in the new law, The Anti-Racism Act, 2017. In 2018, he led the survey research for the Independent Street Checks Review in Ontario and the review of the Respectful Workplace Policy in the Ontario Public Service for the Cabinet Office as well as serving as the expert advisor for the Legal Aid Ontario five-year strategic planning. More recently, he served a similar role for the Government of Nova Scotia’s new Dismantling Racism and Hate Act, 2022. He also serves as an independent expert in various legal cases and as an expert consultant for Canada in various United Nations agencies involving clean energy and climate change, including being a participant at COP 27 and COP 28. His empirical research is frequently cited in Canadian legal cases, including in recent landmark decisions such as Ligue des Noirs du Québec v. City of Montréal (2024) and Attorney General of Quebec v. Luamba (2024).