Infra-Legalities research paper shortlisted for SLSA Article Prize

An article co-authored by Gavin Sullivan (Edinburgh Law School) and Dimitri Van Den Meerssche (Queen Mary University London) has been shortlisted for the best Article Prize by the Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA). The SLSA Article Prize recognises the most outstanding contributions to socio-legal scholarship published as journal articles each year. 

The article - ‘The legal infrastructures of UK Border Control – Cerberus and the dispositif of speculative suspicion’ (2024) 25(8) German Law Journal 1308 – examines a powerful new digital border governance system (Cerberus) that the Home Office and British Aerospace Engineering (BAE) are developing to algorithmically detect and govern ‘risk’ at the UK border. It argues that Cerberus is generating far-reaching effects and posing serious AI-based accountability challenges that our existing legal frameworks fail to effectively capture. 

This research was undertaken as part of Dr Sullivan’s UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship project, Infra-Legalities: Global Security Infrastructures, AI and International Law. It draws from elite interviews with Home Office border policy experts and Cerberus data engineers. 

Dr Sullivan said: "Our article tries to grapple with the profound stakes that powerful algorithmic infrastructures are posing in high-stakes areas of governance like digital border control and develop a different sociolegal approach for studying these systems in action. At a time of rising authoritarianism and data-driven exclusion, learning how to map and critique these kinds of AI systems has never been more important. We are extremely grateful to UKRI for supporting critical law and technology research, to the MOBILE Centre for Global Mobility Law at the University of Copenhagen for organising the workshop and symposium that led to this paper being published, and to the SLSA Article Prize committee for recognising the value of our work. We’re really honoured to be shortlisted for this award." 

The winner of this year’s Article Prize will be announced at the SLSA Annual Conference on 31 March 2026.