Top: Mevini Kavisinghe, Law’28, is working with Professor Cherie Metcalf on a research project using machine learning and large language models to study how private lawsuits are used to enforce public regulation in Canada. Bottom: Sierra Wild, Law’27, is partnering with international trade scholar Professor Nicolas Lamp on research into “managed trade,” with plans to develop the work into a peer‑reviewed academic article.
Top: Mevini Kavisinghe, Law’28, is working with Professor Cherie Metcalf on a research project using machine learning and large language models to study how private lawsuits are used to enforce public regulation in Canada. Bottom: Sierra Wild, Law’27, is partnering with international trade scholar Professor Nicolas Lamp on research into “managed trade,” with plans to develop the work into a peer‑reviewed academic article.

Mevini Kavisinghe, Law’28, and Sierra Wild, Law’27, will have full-time jobs this summer conducting research alongside faculty members as part of the Queen’s Undergraduate Student Summer Research Fellowship (USSRF) program.

Kavisinghe and Wild will partner with Professors Cherie Metcalf and Nicolas Lamp, respectively, on Queen’s Law research projects supported under the USSRF program.

Kavisinghe will work with Professor Metcalf on her project “Private Rights of Action and the Enforcement of Public Regulation In Canada,” funded by a SSHRC Insight Development Grant (IDG).

A goal of the project is to use machine learning and computational linguistics to learn about the prevalence of private rights of action in public regulatory schemes in Canada. An example of a private right of action is the ability for those harmed by anticompetitive behaviour to bring private suits under the Competition Act.

The project builds on work by Metcalf’s collaborator Diego Zambrano, Stanford University, who has undertaken similar work to identify the use of private rights of action to enforce regulations in the U.S. at both the federal and state level.

“In 2023, Zambrano’s research found that private enforcement rights were ‘surprisingly prevalent’ in many types of U.S. regulation,” Metcalf says. “This raises a question of why they are so common in the U.S. and whether this is true in other countries that share a common law tradition but perhaps not a similar litigation culture.”

Working with Zambrano and his collaborators, Kavisinghe and Metcalf will replicate Zambrano’s study for the corpus of Canadian law, beginning with federal and Ontario laws. The project will teach Kavisinghe how to apply Large Language Models (LLM) and machine learning to analyze the law at scale.

“This will be a valuable skill set that will enable Mevini to conduct her own research about the prevalence of specific features in legal schemes,” Metcalf says. “The ability to use the methods we will apply will create options for Mevini to explore her own questions about the structure of the law in Canada.

“Studying details of the law across jurisdictions in Canada can be challenging. This project will help us understand how well new ‘big data’ approaches can advance that kind of work.”

Kavisinghe will also have the opportunity to participate in other components of Metcalf’s SSHRC IDG project, which use surveys to assess comparative attitudes toward private action to enforce government regulation in Canada and the U.S. She will work closely with Metcalf as supervisor and also with Zambrano, his students, and additional collaborators at Emory University and the University of Southern California.  

“Mevini will learn valuable skills related to using ‘big data’ methods to understand the structure of the law, including their strengths and limits,” Metcalf says. “The research will allow Mevini to gain an understanding of particular features of law in a comparative context within Canada, and also relative to the U.S. She will be part of a team-based collaboration with researchers in Canada and at leading U.S. schools.”  

Kavisinghe says she is “really looking forward to working with Professor Metcalf,” on this project.

“It is a great opportunity to build my research skills and learn more about private enforcement in public regulation.”

Wild will work with Professor Lamp on his research project “Trading in (Dis)Order: The Crisis of Globalization and the Future of International Trade Law and Policy,” funded through a SSHRC Insight Grant.

Their summer partnership will be a valuable continuation of previous work together. In 2025, Wild worked with Lamp as a research assistant on his edited volume Reckoning and Renewal: The World Trade Organization and Its Dispute Settlement System at 30 (Toronto University Press, 2025). She continued working for him during the 2025-2026 academic year and is currently completing an Individual Supervised Project (ISP) under Lamp’s supervision.

Wild’s research is complementary to Lamp’s and feeds well into his SSHRC project.

“In her ISP, Wild is examining how Western countries are increasingly embracing “managed trade,” especially in the steel sector,” he says. “Her ISP is directly related to the subject of my SSHRC grant and, specifically, a paper I am writing on "The Debate about Chinese ‘Overcapacity’ and the International Division of Labour: Four Futures for International Economic Law.”

During the summer fellowship, Lamp will work with Wild to develop her ISP into an academic article suitable for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. He will also connect her with officials at Global Affairs Canada who are working on the steel file and with whom he collaborates closely in his role as director of the Queen’s Institute on Trade Policy, the premier training course for trade officials in Canada. Along with other Queen’s Law students, Wild had the opportunity to attend this year’s Queen’s Institute on Trade Policy in Kingston on April 13-15, with the theme “Trading in Disorder: A Trade Strategy for Navigating U.S. Protectionism and Chinese Industrial Policy.”

Beyond the fellowship’s summer conclusion, Lamp is planning two opportunities for Wild to present her research in fall 2026. He will submit a panel proposal on the turn to managed trade to the Canadian Council on International Law Annual Conference in Ottawa, as well as a proposal to the World Trade Organization Public Forum in Geneva.

“This opportunity will allow Wild to showcase her capabilities as a researcher and writer, boost her chances in the job market, and allow her to contribute meaningfully to current debates in trade law and policy,” Lamp says. “It will also amplify the impact of my SSHRC Insight Grant and allow me to draw on Sierra’s work in my future work on the grant.”

Wild says she is “incredibly grateful for the opportunity” to work with Lamp through this program.

“With the USSRF and Professor Lamp's guidance, I will write my first academic article for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. This experience will contribute to research and current trade law debates, enable me to connect with public officials, and give me practical experience in trade law.”

About the USSRF program

The Undergraduate Student Summer Research Fellowship program combines central university support with faculty members’ own research funds to hire students over 16 weeks during the summer. The experience provides the students with meaningful opportunities to engage in discovery-based learning and to develop research and presentation skills. 

By Tracy Weaver