Office of the President

As one of Canada’s top 5 research-intensive universities and the largest bilingual (French-English) university in the world, with an increasing commitment to Indigenous languages and cultures, uOttawa is a gateway to the world.   

I intend to make the most of the University’s unique identity and unparalleled strategic geographical position to build a stronger community. The University is located on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe, in the national capital of a G7 country. It is steps away from Parliament, the Supreme Court, major cultural institutions and a vast network of embassies, and close to Canada’s largest tech park, in Kanata North, and world-renowned research hospitals. 
 
Together, we will continue to transform our university, our city, our country, and the world. 
 
Marie-Eve Sylvestre 
President and Vice-Chancellor 

Marie-Eve Sylvestre has been president and vice-chancellor of the University of Ottawa since July 1, 2025. Prior to assuming this role, she was dean of the Civil Law Section of the Faculty of Law and co-chair of the Senate Committee on Academic Freedom. Under her leadership, the Civil Law Section promoted transformative learning experiences and achieved record growth in research activities, launching the first certificate in Indigenous law in French in North America and Jurivision.ca, an audiovisual knowledge mobilization platform. She also helped strengthen the ties between the faculty and the local and international community, including through the creation of an Alumni Advisory Board, the Outaouais Interdisciplinary Social Law Clinic and a dual degree offered in collaboration with the European and International School of the Faculty of Law of Lyon 3.  

A distinguished interdisciplinary scholar, Dr. Sylvestre’s research focuses on criminal law and practices that have a discriminatory impact on marginalized populations. Her book Red Zones: Criminal Law and the Territorial Governance of Marginalized People (Cambridge University Press, 2020), co-authored with Nicholas Blomley and Céline Bellot, received the 2021 W. Wesley Pue Prize of the Canadian Law and Society Association. From 2017 to 2019, Dr. Sylvestre acted as the justice expert for the Public Inquiry Commission into the Relationships between Indigenous People and Certain Public Services in Quebec (the Viens Commission). She is a founding member of the Observatory on Profiling and testified as an expert for the plaintiff in Luamba v. A.G. Quebec, on racial profiling in traffic stops.

Dr. Sylvestre is a member of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada and a board member of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She was awarded the distinction of Advocatus Emeritus by the Quebec Bar in 2022.

Marie-Eve Sylvestre holds an LLB from the Université de Montréal, as well as an LLM and an SJD from Harvard Law School, where she was a Frank Knox Memorial Foundation fellow. From 2000 to 2001, she served as a law clerk to Justice Charles D. Gonthier at the Supreme Court of Canada.

She is the first woman to lead the University of Ottawa since its inception in 1848.