Professor Coyle joined the Faculty of Law in 2000. His primary research interests relate to aboriginal rights and dispute resolution theory.
In 2004 he was commissioned by the Ipperwash Inquiry to write its background research paper on Aboriginal land claims and treaty rights in Ontario. In the past four years he has been invited twice by the Senate Standing Committee on Aboriginal Peoples to present submissions to the Committee on land claims reform. In 2005, together with a group of academics from across the country, he received a five-year SSHRC grant to investigate the negotiation of Aboriginal governance.
Professor Coyle has been the recipient of a UWO international research grant to investigate the role of power relations in indigenous dispute resolution, and in 2008 he was named the first MacCormick Fellow by the University of Edinburgh Law School.
His most recent publication is a chapter analysing the use of ADR processes to resolve indigenous land disputes, in S. Imai, K. McNeil and B. Richardson, eds., Indigenous Peoples and the Law; Comparative and Critical Perspective (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2009).