I received my legal education in the United Kingdom, and later on, specialized in international banking and finance law. My focus was on the microprudential regulation of banks and the European regulatory regime on so-called 'STS' securitization. With a keen interest in economics, I developed a strong foundation in its intersection with law, better grasping the evolving relationship between economic trends and ways of legal reasoning. This interest, accompanied by other important forces in my life, guided me to the areas I now research. These include the philosophy of law, public international law, and criminal law.
As an Iranian-Canadian, I bring a unique and characteristically eccentric flavour of philosophy to my work, drawing from the ancient wisdom of Persian poets and philosophers. This brings a layer of meaning to my work that imbues itself into my everyday life at Osgoode. This ethos is, with deep regret, inspired by the loss of my beloved cousin in the Islamic Republic of Iran’s attack on the Ukrainian International Airlines flight PS752. The principles by which my cousin lived, and the tragic circumstances of his murder, remain the greatest influences that have led me to my current field of research.
Research
There is a new set of human rights violations emerging from the deployment of so-called AI and quantum technologies. Capable of extracting information about the internal thoughts of an individual, these technologies exacerbate conceptual uncertainties surrounding thought and its role in law. Under Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, individuals have the right to freedom of thought and nation-states have a duty to respect, protect, and promote it. This becomes climatically problematic when the same nation-state deploys neuroinvasive technologies in its attempt at managing threats to its public order and national security. These technologies may include machinelearning algorithms, specialized sensors, and facial recognition software, which collect, process, and infer information about the unexpressed thoughts privately held by individuals at the behest of whoever wields them. The latest research in neuroscience and psychology suggests that by using this information, new adjacent technologies have been developed to hypernudge and manipulate the internal thoughts of individuals. To this end, my research is an endeavour to develop multidisciplinary methods for reconfiguring the legal character, scope, and content of the right to freedom of thought, so as to address novel rights violations arising from emerging technologies that are capable of encroaching upon the forum internum.