PhD (awarded with no corrections), University of Edinburgh (2015 – 2019) Title: “Digisprudence: The Affordance of Legitimacy in Code-as-Law”. The thesis considers the ways code architectures regulate behaviour, and how this form of regulation can be done legitimately. It will be published as a monograph in Edinburgh University Press’ Future Law series in 2022.
LLM in Innovation, Technology and the Law (with distinction), University of Edinburgh (2013 – 2015) Courses included privacy theory, data protection (inc. GDPR), legal challenges of ICT, e-commerce, and the law of robotics. My LL.M. dissertation won the Google Award for Best Postgraduate Paper at BILETA 2016 and was published as ‘Opening the Black Box: Petri Nets and Privacy by Design’.
LLB (with first class honours), University of Edinburgh (2003 – 2007) My undergraduate dissertation was published in the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice.
Diploma in Legal Practice, University of Edinburgh (2007 – 2008)
Diploma in Software Technology for the Web (with distinction), Edinburgh Napier University (2010 – 2011)
Employment experience
Visiting professor, Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University (Apr – May 2022) Designed and delivered Master-level course ‘Critical Reflections on Computational Law’ with Mireille Hildebrandt. The 12-lecture course covers a wide range of practical and theoretical aspects of computational ‘law’ and legal tech, aiming to sensitise students to the interactions between legal philosophy and the philosophy of technology, while maintaining a strong connection to real-world legal technologies and positive law (e.g. Article 22 GDPR and the EU’s proposed AI Act).
Postdoctoral researcher, Counting as a Human Being in the Era of Computational Law (COHUBICOL), Law, Science, Technology & Society (LSTS), Vrije Universiteit Brussel (2019 – present) Foundational research in computational law, developing a new hermeneutics between legal theory and theoretical computer science with the goal of retaining (and reshaping, if necessary) the central tenets of the rule of law.
Research and teaching assistant, University of Strathclyde (2016 – 2018) Taught sessions on the LLM module “Privacy, Crime and Security” as part of the Internet Law and Policy programme at Strathclyde. Topics included privacy theory, user rights under the GDPR, and algorithmic accountability. Assisted Prof. Lilian Edwards on a variety of projects.
Research assistant, UK Copyright and Creative Economy Centre (CREATe), University of Edinburgh (2013 – 2015) Assisted Prof. Burkhard Schafer on the project ‘Self-enforcing IP Law: Life after DRM’.
Technical consultant, Scottish Law Commission (2011 – present)
Other experience
General Co-chair, CRCL conference (Cross-disciplinary Research in Computational Law: “Computational ‘law’ on edge”) (2022/2023) Alongside Mireille Hildebrandt, Frank Pasquale, and Katie Atkinson This inaugural conference is closely connected with the CRCL journal and the COHUBICOL project. It is unique in its goal of creating a genuinely cross-disciplinary dialogue between law and computer science, which is reflected in the paper-reply-response format of the presentations. As general co-chair I played a central role in conference organisation, from inviting authors and repliers to organising venue logistics. I also designed the conference’s branding and online presence.
Co-founder and Managing Editor, Journal of Cross-disciplinary Research in Computational Law (CRCL) (2020 – present) I played a central role in launching CRCL, the sister journal to COHUBICOL, including designing and tailoring the journal’s website, workflow, and publication template.
Technical Editor, SCRIPTed (2013 – 2023) I handled all aspects of the journal’s digital publishing workflow, from Word templating to issue launches. I designed the journal’s website and re-designed the back-end publishing workflow to be more user- and M2M-friendly in order to reduce human error, improve the efficiency of the publishing process, and to integrate better with other metadata platforms and tools as well as social media (e.g. DOI, Google Scholar, Dublin Core, Open Graph).
Co-chair, Edinburgh Postgraduate Law Conference (2017)
Convener (chair) and trustee, Edinburgh Samba School (2017 – 2019; performer since 2013)
Volunteer and assistant trainer, Samaritans (2011 – 2013)
Scholarships & awards
Principal’s Career Development PhD Scholarship, University of Edinburgh Full scholarship (tuition and stipend, 2015 – 2018), with a focus on public engagement.
