Gehan Gunasekara

Associate Professor, The University of Auckland

Gehan Gunasekara studied at Victoria University of Wellington where he completed a BA/LLB and at the University of Auckland where he completed his LLM (Hons).

He was admitted as a barrister and solicitor in 1988 before taking up an assistant lectureship in business law at Massey University’s Business School where he taught from 1988 to 1991.

Since 1991 Gehan has taught at the University of Auckland Business School where he is an associate professor in commercial law. Gehan’s teaching and research has specialised in the areas of franchising law and information privacy law. He has published widely in these areas both locally and overseas.  He has researched privacy issues connected with applications such as online social networking and the Internet and is a regular commentator and contributor to debate in national media on privacy issues.

Gehan was a member of the academic reference committee for the Review of the Privacy Act by the Law Commission and his research has been cited by the Canadian Privacy Commissioner, the Australian Law Reform Commission and adopted by the New Zealand Law Commission in its recommendations on cross-border transfer. In 2013 he chaired an APEC privacy enforcement workshop in Auckland.

Gehan has also led research in New Zealand on legal issues affecting franchising, especially the incidence and areas of franchise litigation in New Zealand and his research has been cited in Parliamentary debates and in a Cabinet paper. He is currently researching the development and application of cross-border privacy rules for companies and the issues that arise for businesses and individuals when personal information is transferred from one country to another.