About Us
Our Lab
The Refugee Law Lab, based in Toronto, Canada, is co-hosted by York University’s Centre for Refugee Studies & Osgoode Hall Law School.
We undertake research and advocacy about legal analytics, artificial intelligence, and new border control technologies that impact refugees and other non-citizens.
We develop datasets and legal analytics that enhance transparency in refugee law processes. We study and critique the use of artificial intelligence and other technologies by governments and private actors in the migration field. And we produce legal technology that advances the rights and interests of refugees and other marginalized people on the move.
We are committed to social justice, to interdisciplinarity, to evidence-informed policy, and to ensuring that the data, research and technologies that we produce are freely accessible to the public. We strive to work from a community-based perspective, foregrounding the lived experiences of people on the move and their interactions with technology.
Our Team
Sean Rehaag is an Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School. He formerly served as Director of York University’s Centre for Refugee Studies and as Academic Director at Parkdale Community Legal Services. He is an expert in immigration and refugee law, administrative law, legal analytics, computational law, and access to justice. His interdisciplinary academic research examines immigration and refugee law decision-making processes, including studies exploring how sexual minority refugee claims are adjudicated. Much of his research involves empirical quantitative methodologies using computational methods to examine factors that influence outcomes in Canadian refugee adjudication.
Petra Molnar is a lawyer and anthropologist specializing in migration and human rights. A former classical musician, she has been working in migrant justice since 2008, first as a settlement worker and community organizer, and now as a researcher and lawyer. She writes about digital border technologies, immigration detention, health and human rights, gender-based violence, as well as the politics of refugee, immigration, and international law. She is the co-creator of the Migration + Tech Monitor, and a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Her first book, The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in The Age of Artificial Intelligence, was published with The New Press in 2024.
Simon Wallace is a lawyer, PHD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School, and Adjunct Faculty Member at Toronto Metropolitan University’s Faculty of Law. He studies how legal research can be enriched with computational methodologies that allow researchers to read law at scale. He is the developer of obiter.ai, an open source toolkit for legal researchers. Prior to pursuing graduate studies, he ran a practice as a refugee, tenants’ rights, and prisoners’ rights lawyer. From 2019 to 2020, he worked at the Refugee Law Office (Legal Aid Ontario) as its first full-time immigration detention staff lawyer.
Jon Khan is a lawyer and PHD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. From 2018-2019, he completed his LL.M. at the University of Toronto where his thesis focussed on Canadian judicial decisions and judicial decision-making. He is continuing this research at Osgoode Hall Law School. Prior to graduate studies, he worked as a public interest litigator and as a judicial law clerk in a trial level court. These experiences deepened his understanding of access to justice, litigation and Canadian law, and exposed him to many areas of our legal system that desperately require evidence-informed reform.
Kenya-Jade Pinto is an Indo-Kenyan-Canadian documentary photographer, filmmaker, and lawyer. She grew up chasing crabs on the Kenyan coast, before moving to Alberta’s foothills as a teen. KJ’s hyphenated worldview informs her work where she focuses on non-fiction and narrative projects that navigate themes of displacement, belonging, and access to justice. KJ’s training as a human rights lawyer has deepened her practice as a documentary photographer on projects like Not Yet Home, Level Justice, and more recently, The Sandbox. In 2021, KJ was named a National Geographic Explorer. KJ joined the Refugee Law Lab as filmmaker-in-residence, where she is documenting the impact of migration management technology on people on the move.
Our Partners
The Refugee Law Lab draws on research supported by:
