Thomas Telfer is a Professor of Law at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada. He joined Western in 2002 from the University of Auckland where he taught for eight years. Professor Telfer’s research and teaching interests include bankruptcy law, commercial law, contracts, legal history and mindfulness.

In 2023, he was admitted as a member of the International Academy of Commercial and Consumer Law. The IACCL is focused on the global exchange of ideas and is composed of more than hundred specially selected leading scholars from throughout the world. The academy recognizes persons in various countries who have achieved renown in their fields through research, writing of books, major articles, teaching and law reform. Membership is accorded to these persons who have excelled and gained recognition nationally or even internationally.

He has been a visiting professor at the University of Toronto, Osgoode Hall Law School, Duke University, University of Sydney, University of Melbourne, Case Western Reserve University, Victoria University of Wellington, University of Adelaide and the University of Auckland.

Professor Telfer has published widely in the areas of insolvency law and legal history.

He has a major interest in the intersection of history and bankruptcy law and is the author of Ruin and Redemption: A Struggle for Canadian Bankruptcy Law, 1867-1919 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History, 2014).  

He is also the co-author (with Virginia Torrie) of: Debt and Federalism: Landmark Cases in Canadian Bankruptcy and Insolvency Law, 1894-1937 (UBC Press, 2022). He has recently published (with Virginia Torrie:  Debt and Federalism, Vol 2: Provincial Efforts to Protect Insolvent Debtors, 1939-1960 (Canlii). 

He is the co-editor of the Canadian Business Law Journal and the Journal of the Insolvency Institute of Canada. He is a member of the Editorial Board for the New Zealand Law Review.

From 2018-2022 he held the position of Teaching Fellow from the Centre for Teaching and Learning. The purpose of the Fellowship was to  develop mindfulness and mental health initiatives. In 2017, he introduced mindfulness as an optional first year course and in 2018 received a Leadership in Wellness Award of Recognition from Western for mindfulness education. From 2019-2025 he offered an upper year credit course: Mindfulness and the Legal Profession.