Katie Sykes, Law Professor, Thompson Rivers University, Faculty of Law

B.A. (Queen’s), J.D. (Toronto), LL.M. (Harvard), LL.M. (Dalhousie), Ph.D. Candidate (Dalhousie)

Katie Sykes’s research interests include international trade law, public international law and animal law.

Professor Sykes obtained a J.D. from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law in 2002, graduating as the gold medallist. She was a law clerk to Hon. Justice Louis LeBel of the Supreme Court of Canada in 2002-2003, and then attended Harvard Law School as a Frank Knox Scholar, graduating with an LL.M. in 2004. She also holds an LL.M. from the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie, where she is currently a candidate in the Ph.D. programme. Her Ph.D. research focuses on international law and food, and in particular the tensions between different international norms in the areas of trade, environment, human rights and animal welfare. From 2004 to 2010, she was an associate in the New York office of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, a leading international law firm.

At Dalhousie, she taught Animals and the Law, and also taught International Trade Law with Professor Gilbert Winham. She has published in the Canadian Yearbook of International Law, the Dalhousie Law Journal and Animal Law Review, among other journals.

Professor Sykes teaches Property Law in the first year curriculum and International Trade Law in the upper year curriculum.