Faculty

Margaret Ann Wilkinson
Professor

Josephine Spencer Niblett Law Building Room 22 Phone: 519-661-2111 x88407 University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada N6A 5B7 Fax: 519-661-3506 Email: mawilk@uwo.ca

Teaching
I am jointly appointed to the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Information and Media Studies. At FIMS I am active in our graduate programs. I have long been active in both the MLIS and Ph.D. in Library and Information Science. In the doctoral program, I am a supervisor and advisor in the "Information: Policy, Power and Institutions" area. I have been active in the M.A. in Journalism but most recently have supported development of our Media Studies area. I am part of the doctoral supervisory faculty for the Media Studies area of "Information Industries." At FIMS, I pioneered the course in Legal Issues for Information Professionals. I have also taught and written in the area of Management. I continue to enjoy supervising students engaged in independent studies. At the doctoral level,I teach a course on Information Ownership and Governance. In the Faculty of Law, I am Director of the Area of Concentration in Intellectual Property, Information and Technology Law and teach several courses in the area of intellectual property law (copyright, patents, trademarks, industrial design, confidential information, etc.) and other information law (privacy, personal data protection, censorship, telecommunications regulation, etc.). I am interested in interdisciplinary initiatives. For example, in the past, I have been involved in a large interdisciplinary team teaching eBusiness to HBA and MBA students at the Ivey School of Business. Currently I am participating in the undergraduate law course being mounted by the Faculty of Law. I am also active in the new Masters of Laws program at the Faculty of Law.

Research Interests
One aspect of my research includes employing empirical methodologies to look at the process of information policy-making: at the role of organizations in the private and public sector, at the legislators, at the courts, and so on. Another aspect directly examines the legal responses which are shaping and have shaped information policy. In coming to grips with the information age, law is often perceived as providing a wide range of policy instruments to societies grappling with emerging social and economic issues – some encouraging dissemination, others constraining it. Part of my research asks about the role of existing legal instruments in coping with information --devices such as copyright and other areas of intellectual property law, personal data protection legislation and privacy law, and criminal provisions governing censorship. These two elements of my research agenda, the empirical and the doctrinal, are currently combined in an initiative I am pursuing which has been funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada in the Initiatives in the New Economy program. I am interested in international comparisons with our Canadian experience and have done work comparing the copyright situations of Canada and Vietnam, and Canada and the United States, and the relationship of domestic information policies with international conventions and agreements. Another aspect of my research has involved examining the changing roles of professionals in the information society, focusing particularly, but not exclusively, on my own professions of law and librarianship. In considering the roles of these professions, I have explored, with research partners and students, the roles of codes of ethics or professional conduct in the regulation of professionals and the future of various professions as predicted by the attitudes toward those professions displayed by high school graduates.

Faculty of Law Bio (including a list of publications)

Selected Achievements of My FIMS Students

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