Professor Burkhard Schafer

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Professor of Computational Legal Theory

MA, LLM, FHEA

Tel: +44 (0)131 650 2035

Email: B.Schafer@ed.ac.uk

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I studied Theory of Science, Logic, Theoretical Linguistics, Philosophy and Law at the Universities of Mainz, Munich, Florence and Lancaster. My main field of interest is the interaction between law, science and computer technology from doctrinal, comparative and legal-theoretical perspectives. This research encompasses both the problems that technology and technological change poses to the law – technology law – and the use of technology in the justice system and the legal services industry – legal informatics.

Both perspectives, technology as a subject of regulation and a tool for regulation, are brought together through a theoretical perspective: How can law, understood as a system, communicate with systems external to it? “Computational legal theory”, in the understanding of my chair, tries to give answers to this question, by exploring the scope and also limits of computational representations of legal thought, and also by an analysis of how technology changes the way law thinks about such issues as responsibility, liability, harm and ultimately personhood and what it means to be human, and living life lawfully.

I'm co-founder and currently Director of the SCRIPT Centre for IT and IP law, where our work covers all aspects of technology regulation, from IP law to data protection to e-commerce to e-forensics. Since its inception, the hope for SCRIPT was to break down disciplinary silos, develop a holistic approach to technology regulation that crosses the lines between legal subdisciplines, and trains lawyers that are technology literate, and technologists with sound understanding of law and ethics. Most recently, this lead to my involvement as Co-I with Creative Informatics, the large R&D project for the Creative Industries.

As a co-founder and co-director of the Joseph Bell Centre for Legal Reasoning and Forensic Statistics, I also work on questions of legal technology and its role in the justice system. Most recently, this meant an interest in computational creativity, emotional AI, and what these concepts mean when applied to law.

I'm involved with a number of organisations that promote the exchange between computer science and law, including the German Association for Informatics, BILETA, and the Evidence and Investigation network of the Scottish Institute for Policing Research. I’m currently member of the expert group of AI4People, chairing their working group on an ethics framework for legal technology, and member of the data ethics group of the Turing Institute. I’m also a member of the legal technologist accreditation panel of the Law Society of Scotland.

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Professor Veronica Ruiz Abou-Nigm

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Chair of Private International Law

PhD, LLM (Edin.), JD (UCUDAL)

Office hours:

Email: V.Ruiz.Abou-Nigm@ed.ac.uk

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Current Research Interests

My research bridges disciplines, focusing on the intersections between Private International Law and various other legal disciplines, such as Maritime Law, Public International Law, International Commercial Arbitration and International Civil and Commercial Litigation. The common thread of my research is internationalisation, from a perspective that embraces diversity: legal, cultural and methodological diversity, and enables the development of legal knowledge that fosters better cross-border cooperation and understandings. In particular, my research develops ideas in which Private International Law can contribute to accommodate the richness of different legal traditions and cultures in cross-border cases.

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Dr Guido Rossi

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Reader in European Legal History

PhD (Cantab)

Tel: +44 (0)131 650 2052

Email: guido.rossi@ed.ac.uk

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Guido Rossi read law at Pavia (Italy) and Cambridge. After a short spell at St Catherine’s College, Oxford, he moved to Edinburgh in 2013. Guido is particularly interested in the medieval and early modern history of civil, canon and commercial law, and welcomes enquires from prospective PhD students on any of those fields.

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Lorna Richardson

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Senior Lecturer in Commercial Law

Director of Postgraduate Taught Studies

LLB (Hons), DipLP, Solicitor (non-practising), Notary Public

Office hours:

Email: lorna.richardson@ed.ac.uk

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Lorna Richardson is a Senior Lecturer in Commercial Law. Prior to joining the University she was a solicitor, practising as a commercial litigator, with major Scottish law firms. Lorna is also qualified to practice in England and Wales.

Lorna teaches in a variety of commercial law subjects, both on campus and by distance learning. She teaches at ordinary, honours and LLM levels.

Lorna has significant experience in providing continuous professional development training to the legal profession. She has designed and delivered bespoke training sessions for major law firms and the judiciary, as well as co-presenting the Law School's annual contract law update (view details).

Lorna is a member of the Edinburgh Centre for Commercial Law. The Centre aims to strengthen existing links and foster further links between academia and the wider legal community in Scotland.

Current Research Interests

Lorna is currently carrying out research on the influence of English law on the development of Scots contract law in the 19th and 20th centuries. Her focus is on the law of error; and recission for material breach of contract.

Research Interests

Lorna's research interests are in the area of commercial law. She has a particular interest in contract law, especially in relation to interpretation and breach. In her time in practice Lorna acted in a number of contract dispute cases which generated significant comment. Lorna is interested in contract law in a historical and comparative context.

Lorna recently co-authored the latest edition of McAllister's Scottish Law of Leases. She has written widely in the areas of retention and set-off.

Teaching

Lorna teaches on the following courses:

  • Commercial Law (Ord)
  • Commercial Leases (Hons)
  • Contract (Hons)
  • Contract Law in Europe LLM
  • Contract Law in Europe LLM by distance learning

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Professor Elspeth Christie Reid

Emeritus Professor of Scottish Private Law

MA LLB DipLP FRSE

Tel: +44 (0)131 650 2008

Email: elspeth.reid@ed.ac.uk

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Elspeth Reid's main research interests are in Scottish private law. Her most recent monograph is The Law of Delict in Scotland, published by Edinburgh University Press in 2022. Her book on Personality, Confidentiality and Privacy in Scots Law was published in 2010 by W Green for the Scottish Universities Law Institute, and she is currently working on a second edition of Personal Bar (with John Blackie), first published in 2006, also by SULI.  She has written extensively on the law of delict in comparative perspective, and she has also published articles on Russian legal matters and translated and edited numerous Russian texts. She was Editor of the Edinburgh Law Review from 2002 until 2006, and has edited several collections of essays. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, an Associate Member of the International Academy of Comparative Law and also a qualified solicitor.

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Judith Rauhofer

Senior Lecturer in IT Law

Director of Education

Rechtsanwalt (non-practicing - Germany), Solicitor (non-practicing - England and Wales)

Tel: +44 (0)131 650 2031

Email: judith.rauhofer@ed.ac.uk

SSRN: Papers

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Judith Rauhofer is a Senior Lecturer in IT Law at the University of Edinburgh and an Associate Director of the Centre for Studies of Intellectual Property and Technology Law (SCRIPT). Her research primarily focuses on data protection and privacy law, drawing from, and combining, other cognate areas of law including human rights, constitutional law and EU law. Judith is particularly interested in exploring the tensions between privacy as an individual right and as a common good. 

Judith teaches both on campus and on the School's online distance learning programmes (ODL). She is the course organiser for Data Protection and Data Privacy (LLM) and EU Data Protection Law (ODL), Information Technology Law (LLM and ODL). Most recently, she was programme director for the LLM Information Technology Law (ODL) and the LLM Innovation, Technology and the Law (ODL).

Judith is qualified as a Rechtsanwalt in Germany and as a solicitor in England and Wales. She has worked in legal practice for several years, advising clients from the media and new media industries on aspects of e-commerce, data protection and IT law. She has advised commercial, government and NGOs and continues to provide consultancy services in the area of data protection and IT law. 

Judith is a member of the Executive of British and Irish Law, Eductation and Technology Association (BILETA) and of the Advisory Councils to the Open Rights Group (ORG) and the foundation for information policy research (fipr).

Judith is a Founding Editor of the European Data Protection Law Review. She also serves as a member of the Editorial Board of the European Journal of Law and Technology.

Judith has supervised a number of PhD students in the area of online privacy and data protection law. She welcomes applications in areas that align with her own research interests including, in particular:

  • The role of fainess in limiting the use of consent in data protection law.
  • Big Data and its impact on the data protection principles of fairness, lawfulness, purpose limitation and data minimisation.
  • The concept of harm in data protection law.
  • The risk and challenges of the "propertisation" of personal data.

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Dr Emily Postan

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Senior Lecturer and Chancellor's Fellow in Bioethics

Deputy Director of the Mason Institute for Medicine, Life Sciences and the Law; Director of Postgraduate Academic Guidance

Office hours:

Email: e.postan@ed.ac.uk

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Emily Postan is a Chancellor's Fellow in Bioethics and a Deputy Director of the Mason Institute for Medicine, Life Sciences and the Law, with lead responsibility for the Institute’s policy engagement portfolio.

Research

Emily is an interdisciplinary bioethicist with a background in philosophy.

Her main research focus lies in interrogating the roles played by biomedical technologies, personal information, and health informatics in our identities, and in characterising the ethical significance of these roles. Her wider research interests encompass:

  • Data ethics
  • AI ethics
  • Neuroethics
  • Genomic and reproductive ethics
  • Regulation of health research.

From 2017-2021 Emily was a Senior Research Fellow on the Wellcome-funded project, Confronting the Liminal Spaces of Health Research Regulation. During this time she was a member of the Scottish Feminist Judgments Project. In 2018 Emily delivered the Rising Star lecture at the annual meeting of the International Neuroethics Society. She was project leader for the Nuffield Council on Bioethics’ 2013 Novel Neurotechnologies report. Emily received her doctorate from the University of Edinburgh in 2017. She has philosophy degrees from the University of Edinburgh and the University of Stirling, and an LLM from the University of Edinburgh. She spent an intervening decade working in policy management at the Scottish Government.

Emily’s monograph Embodied Narratives: Protecting Identity Interests through Ethical Governance of Bioinformation is published by Cambridge University Press in July 2022. This book establishes the ethical imperative for information disclosure practices to take seriously the impacts on our identity-constituting narratives of our encounters with bioinformation about ourselves. Further details and online access can be found here.

Current projects

Emily’s current research project, Identity by Algorithm: Ethical Impacts of Categorisation by Health AI applies questions of identity and belonging to discussions of AI ethics in the context of big health data and the ways that we might be classified or re-described using these data. Further details of this project can be found here.

Teaching

Emily teaches on our on-campus and online distance learning Medical Law and Ethics LLM programmes. She is a lead tutor on the following postgraduate courses:

  • Fundamental Issues in Bioethics
  • Biotechnology, Bioethics and Society (not running in 2021/22)

Emily will be on research leave during the academic year 2022/23.

Doctoral supervision

Emily welcomes expressions of interest on research questions relating to bioethics, medical ethics, and her particular research interests listed above.

Current supervisees:

Inquiries

Emily also welcomes media inquiries on bioethics topics and is happy to discuss where the Mason Institute could offer policy advice on matters related to medical law and bioethics. She can be reached at e.postan@ed.ac.uk

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Mr Gerard Porter

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Senior Lecturer in Medical Law & Ethics

LLB, LLM

Tel: +44 (0)131 650 2023

Email: gerard.porter@ed.ac.uk

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Gerard Porter is a Senior Lecturer in Medical Law and Ethics. He is a graduate of Cardiff University (LL.B. Law and Japanese) and Kyushu University, Japan (LL.M. International Economic and Business Law). His research interests include medical law, patent law and the regulation of the life sciences. He speaks Japanese and also conducts comparative research in Japanese law within these subject areas. He is currently serving as the Programme Director of the online LLM in Medical Law and Ethics at Edinburgh Law School.

He has held visiting fellowships at the Centre for Biomedical Ethics, National University of Singapore and with the Program on Science, Technology and Society at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. 

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Professor Stephen Neff

Professor of War and Peace

Programme Director LLM in International Law

Office hours:

Tel: +44 (0)131-650-2067

Email: stephen.neff@ed.ac.uk

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Stephen Neff's primary research interest is the history of public international law. He is the author of a book on the historical development of international economic law. His current focus is the history of the law of neutrality. Another major interest is international human rights law, from both the academic and the practical standpoints.

Research Interests

Stephen Neff's primary research interest is the history of public international law. He is the author of a book on the historical development of international economic law. His current focus is the history of the law of neutrality. Another major interest is international human rights law, from both the academic and the practical standpoints.

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Professor Susan McVie

Professor of Quantitative Criminology

BSc Hons, MSc
OBE FRSE FAcSS

Office hours:

Tel: +44 (0)131 651 3782

Email: s.mcvie@ed.ac.uk

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Susan is Chair of Quantitative Criminology within the School of Law. She has several major research roles within the School and plays a significant role with in the Scottish and UK research community. She is Director of the ESRC-funded Understanding Inequalities (UI) project which aims to create an innovative and ambitious programme of research on the causes, consequences and policy implications of social inequaltieis across different dimensions and spatial scales.  Susan is Co-Director of the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime, a prospective longitudinal study of youth offending based at the University of Edinburgh since 1998. She has responsibility for strategic management of the research programme and plays a key role in advancing statistical analysis of the data and publishing the results of the research.  She is also research leader for the crime and justice work package of the Administrative Data Research Centre for Scotland.  She is a member of the Management Committee for the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research, another collaborative initiative involving Stirling, Glasgow, Strathclyde and Edinburgh Universities in partnership with the other Scottish HEIs.  Susan founded the Applied Quantitative Methods Network(AQMeN) in 2009 and was Director of a major programme of research and training until 2017.  She is currently Co-Director of AQMeN and is involved in developing a programme of training for business and industry. 

Susan has a broad range of substantive interests, and her recent work includes research into:  crime patterns and trends in the context of the crime drop in Scotland; youth anti-social behaviour and offending; criminal careers through the life-course; systems of justice, including transitions from juvenile to adult criminal justice systems; neighbourhood effects on offending; patterns of violence and homicide; youth gangs and knife crime; policing and crime reduction; and stop and search in Scotland. She is also interested in the use of advanced methods in quantitative criminology, and her current work involves developing longitudinal methods for understanding the factors associated with trends in crime over time; modelling trajectories of offending and linking this to criminal histories; using multi-level modelling to establish the impact of neighbourhood-level effects and dynamics over and above individual-level effects on individual delinquency; and using quasi-experimental methods to investigate the impact of early youth justice intervention on later behaviour, life chances and criminal conviction trajectories.

Susan is a member of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Capability Committee and has a strategic role in advising on the development of doctorial training and advanced quantitative methods training at the UK level.   She is also a member of several Scottish Government committees, including the Independent Advisory Group on Stop and Search and the Independent Advisory Group on Policing and Biometric Data, both chaired by John Scott QC, the Building Safer Communities Programme Board (for which she is Performance Champion), and the Board of Official Statistics in Scotland.  She is a strategic advisor to Police Scotland on stop and search, biometric data, children and young people, and demand and performance.  She sits on the Board of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.  Susan is consulted broadly on a range of crime and justice related issues by central and local governments, third sector organisations and private sector bodies.  She regularly reviews articles for various journals, and is a member of the editorial board of the British Journal of Criminology, Youth Justice, and Criminology and Criminal Justice. Prior to working for the University, she was a government researcher in Scotland with responsiblity for the development of Government research on crime surveys, various aspects of the criminal justice system and substance use.

Along with her colleague Professor Lesley McAra, Susan was awarded the Howard League for Penal Reform Research Medal in 2013 and the Chancellor's Award for Impact in 2016.  She was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2014.  She was awarded an OBE in the 2016 Queen's New Year's Honours List for Services to Social Science. 

Ph.D. supervision interests
Quantitative criminology; youth crime and justice; violence and homicide; developmental criminology and criminal careers; police stop and search; crime trends and patterns.

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