Ghislain Otis is a member of the Quebec bar and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He holds a PhD in law from the University of Cambridge which awarded him the Yorke Legal Essay Prize for his comparative study of constitutional remedies.

Professor Otis is currently at the Civil Law Section of the University of Ottawa where he holds the tier 1 Canada Research Chair on Legal Diversity of Indigenous Peoples. He leads and coordinates major international research initiatives with indigenous peoples and traditional communities on legal pluralism.

He has directed and co-authored several books on indigenous peoples, human rights and legal pluralism. The most recent ones include Contributions to the Study of Indigenous Legal Systems (2018 in French) Aboriginal Governance and Federalism, (2013); Judges and the Dialogue of Legal Cultures (2013, In French); Methodology of Legal Pluralism (2013, French) and Customary Adoption : the Challenge of Legal Pluralism (2012, in French).

Professor Otis is the director of a major international research partnership funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the AUF (Agence universitaire de la Francophonie). The project brings together academic and indigenous researchers as well as indigenous organisations from seven countries working on a comparative study of the management of legal pluralism in postcolonial states ((see www.legitimus.ca)