Elizabeth Steyn is an associate expert of the IIJS and an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law of the University of Calgary, where she teaches courses including LAW 693.14 Critical Minerals, Regulatory Frameworks and Geopolitics, and LAW 693.13 Business and Human Rights. Previously, she was the Cassels Brock Fellow in Mining and Finance Law at the Western University Faculty of Law where she led the law school's interdisciplinary sustainable development curriculum, including the Global Sustainability Certification and the Graduate Diploma in Mining Law, Finance, and Sustainability. She also was a faculty member of the Western Institute for Earth and Space Exploration.
She is a member of The Foundation for Natural Resources and Energy Law (FNREL), the Natural Resources Law Teachers Institute (NRLTI), the Canadian Institute of Mining (CIM), and the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC). In September 2023, she was appointed to the International Committee of the FNREL.
The transversal theme in her research activities is the intersection of sustainable natural resource exploitation practices with responsible business conduct. Thus she considers contemporary issues around a responsible and sustainable mining and metals sector, as well as cutting-edge developments including regulatory gaps relating to deep-sea mining, and critical and strategic minerals. For instance, she recently served as the Principal Investigator on an 18-months United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) project on responsible mining for the energy transition.
Fluent in five languages, she is the author/co-author of 18 articles/book chapters in peer-reviewed publications and has spoken at national and international conferences on five continents. She obtained her Doctorate in Law (LL.D.) in 2018 from the Université de Montréal (Mention of Excellence; Dean's Honour List) on the harmonization of the protection of Indigenous sacred sites and the development of natural resource projects.
In 2016, Steyn spent four months as a Visiting Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Department of Law and Anthropology in Halle (Saale), Germany, at the invitation of its Director, Professor Marie-Claire Foblets.
Originally from South Africa, she received her LL.M. cum laude (Council’s Award) from the University of South Africa, and graduated with a BA/LL.B. cum laude from the University of Johannesburg, where she served on the Faculty of Law from 1994 to 2003.
Steyn was admitted as an Advocate to the High Court of South Africa in 1994 and practiced in the natural resources and energy law, corporate law, corporate governance law, commercial law, and international trade law fields.
Skills: Sustainable Mining and Metals Sector, Environmental Law, Corporate Governance Law