Law and the challenges of change

Edinburgh Law School researchers interrogate the role of law in supporting – or stifling – technological advancement through collaborative research, exploring the intersection of law, technology and society from a multidisciplinary and multi-jurisdiction perspective. They look at the relationship between international legal obligations and emerging applications of AI to engage policy-makers, computer scientists, technologists, industry representatives and individuals at the cutting-edge of developing and using such systems. They also confront the spaces ‘in-between’ law and governance practice as experienced by actors grappling with regulation in action, with innovative and acutely prescient emphasis on anticipating the future.

A world of technology

Research

Data has a better idea

Artificial Intelligence and the International Rule of Law

The Artificial Intelligence and the International Rule of Law Workshop Series explores fundamental questions about the relationship between international legal obligations and emerging applications of artificial intelligence (AI) that bear upon key domains of international law: the laws of war, human rights and refugee law.

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Centre for the Decentralised Digital Economy (DECaDE)

DECaDE is a partnership between the University of Surrey as lead institution, the Centre for Design Informatics and Edinburgh Law School at the University of Edinburgh, and the Digital Catapult. Edinburgh Law School leads one of the research strands of DECADE, exploring the issues of governance and regulation in the decentralised digital economy.

Coronavirus / Covid-19 cases in the world. (9.04.2020) Source: Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at JHU

Covid-19 research and engagement

Edinburgh Law School undertook a breadth of research and engagement on the Covid-19 pandemic.

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Emotional AI in Cities

The Emotional AI in Cities project seeks to answer how UK and Japanese societies can best live with technologies that sense, profile, learn and interact with people’s feelings, emotions and moods

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Horizon Digital Economy Research Institute

Horizon explores how challenges, such as trust regarding the use of personal data, can be addressed in the development of new technologies and products that blend physical and digital elements. Edinburgh Law School will work closely with Horizon’s Cross-Cutting Programme to provide new cross-sectorial insights that can be applied to emerging issues more widely across the Digital Economy.

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Identity by Algorithm

'Identity by Algorithm: Ethical impacts of being recategorised by health AI' applies the critical lens of identity to discussions of AI ethics in the context of big health data. It brings together diverse debates about health technologies, identity, social ontologies human flourishing, and social justice.

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infra-Legalities

infra-Legalities rethinks global security law from the ‘infrastructure space’ it is creating, examining how AI-led security, and the data infrastructures that sustain it, are reshaping law and governance, rights and accountability and security decision-making.

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Infrastructuring Democracy

'Infrastructuring Democracy: The Regulatory Politics of Digital Code, Content and Circulation' asks how digital infrastructures of democracy might be regulated – and might also shape their own regulation. While attention is being paid to these questions in the Global North – for example, on fake news and misinformation around elections – much less attention is focused on regulation in the Global South. The project focuses on these issues in Brazil as a means of exploring both the transnational dimensions of regulation and its specific reverberations in democracies of the Global South.

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Liminal Spaces

Liminal Spaces was a six-year Wellcome-funded project at Edinburgh Law School, which ended in March 2021 and scrutinised regulatory systems that support human health research. The vision of the project was to reimagine human health research regulation to deliver the first-ever integrated, interdisciplinary and crosscutting analysis of health research regulation (HRR).

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Tech-Sex: Law, Sex and Technologies

The Tech-Sex project aims to enhance knowledge and explore important implications of new digital, mechanical and medical technologies that are transforming our sexual lives.

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Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Governance and Regulation

The Trustworthy Autonomous Systems (TAS) programme brings together research communities and key stakeholders to drive forward cross-disciplinary, fundamental research to ensure that autonomous systems are safe, reliable, resilient, ethical and trusted. Edinburgh Law School will lead on research into the legal and social aspects of the governance of Trustworthy Autonomous Systems.

Global Health Emergencies

Vulnerability and Justice in Global Health Emergencies

Global Health Emergencies (GHEs) are crises that affect health, and that are, or should be, of international concern. These might include infectious outbreaks, humanitarian crises and disasters, conflicts, and forced displacements. This is a Wellcome Seed Award Project entitled, ‘Vulnerability and justice in global health emergency regulation: developing future ethical models’.

Research themes