Law, Information and Technology

Law, Information & Technology are increasingly influential elements in our daily interactions. The legal discussions of emerging issues in the uses and abuses of technology, and regulation pose increasingly challenging questions for the law, and its responses.

Rapid advances in information and data transmission, online harassment, the uses of technology in new areas (such as sport and the criminal justice system), are just a few examples of this. The LIT cluster explores issues connected to these topics and more, using interdisciplinary methods and approaches.

For queries relating to the LIT cluster, to host an event, or to join, please email Dr Kim Barker.

Events

Equity and new technological horizons

Online, 8 April 2021

Dr Robert Herian of The Open University Law School, in conjunction with the Equity and Trusts Research Network (ETRN) and the Law, Information, Future, Technology (LIFT) research group, went online on 8th April 2021 for an exciting and ground-breaking interdisciplinary virtual seminar exploring interpretations, intersections, and tensions between the law of equity and new technologies. Combining equitable doctrine and principles, speculative theories, critical fields of thought, and futurological perspectives from the likes of Niklas Luhmann, Gilles Deleuze, Franco Berardi, Ian Bogost, Adam Greenfield, and Bernard Stiegler, the seminar aims to offer radical insights into a techno-equitable future.

Visit the event review to watch the videos and read the review.

People

Dr Kim Barker

Kim is a Senior Lecturer in Law and Co-Director of the Observatory on Online Violence Against Women (@ObserVAW). She holds a PhD in intellectual property, internet regulation and online gaming, and her research expertise falls in the areas of online violence against women (OVAW), the legal responses to online abuse and harassment, online misogyny, hate crimes and online speech, and online harms, and internet regulation. She has particular interests in the regulation of online content from both internet and intellectual property law perspectives, and has published widely on these topics. Kim has also presented her research widely in both national and international venues, and has advised governments and NGOs on issues relating to online safety, online abuse and online harms. She is the Principal Investigator on the ESRC Funded ‘Digital and Online Violence: UK-SK Perspectives’ project, executive member of the British and Irish Law, Education & Technology Association (BILETA), and Academic Lead for the OU’s PolicyWISE initiative.

Jessica Giles

Jessica is a Lecturer in the Law School, and her research looks at the intersection of human rights, religion and emerging issues in technology. I am currently researching space exploration and the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.

Dr Clare Jones

Senior Lecturer in Law. Author of several publications on cyber financial economic crime and author of AI, Big Data, Quantum Computing and Financial Exclusion: tempering enthusiasm and offering a human centric approach to policy; Money laundering in a Virtual World: How the UK law has responded? Clare is a contributor to the Commonwealth Working Party on Cybercrime.

Dr Olga Jurasz

Olga is a Senior Lecturer in Law, and Co-Director of the Observatory on Online Violence Against Women (@ObserVAW). Olga's research focuses in particular on the exploration of legal perspective on online violence against women (OVAW), gender-based social media abuse, online violence against women in politics (OVAWP) and online misogyny specifically.

Conor Logue

Conor is a Doctoral Researcher in the Faculty of Business and Law, and his research explores human rights framework responses to the challenges of mis- and disinformation.

Sahil Mathur

Sahil is a Doctoral Researcher in the Faculty of Businss and Law. His research is related to the use of technology in the financial market and its legal implications, and challenges. With technology having a rapid impact on all of the legal sector, it is challenging regulators’ understanding of technological developments and creating a lot of regulatory grey areas.

Fred Motson

Fred is a Lecturer in the Law School and has a particular interest in the intersection between law and technology, both in how technology can shape or change the practice of law and in how law responds to technological advances. Fred is currently undertaking doctoral research which considers how far legal theories of decision-making and discretion can inform the use of technological decision-making aids in sport (such as the controversial Video Assistant Referee – VAR – system in football).

Francine Ryan

Francine is a Senior Lecturer in Law and Director of the Open Justice Centre. The work of the Open Justice Centre has been the object of considerable interest from scholars of legal education, given its innovative approach to combining experiential learning with cutting edge legal technologies. Francine has an interest in technology enhanced learning and in particular the use of virtual reality (VR). Francine is working with a team that has created a virtual courtroom which is a highly immersive environment that is intended to give participants a realistic experience of a modern courtroom within which participants can take on roles that would be found in a court of law. Francine is conducting research to explore the potential of adopting VR technology and the implementation of disrupting digital pedagogy to enhance legal education.

Publications

• Herian, R. 2021. Data: New Trajectories in Law. 2021. Abingdon: Routledge (forthcoming)
• Chambers-Jones, C. L. (2021) AI, Big Data, Quantum Computing and Financial Exclusion: tempering enthusiasm and offering a human centric approach to policy. Eds Lui, A. & Ryder, N. Routledge Financial Crime Series. FinTech, Artifical Intelligence and the law – the right balance of financial innovation and financial inclusion.
• Herian, R. 2020. Smart Contracts: A Remedial Analysis. Information and Communications Technology Law. 2020 (early access)
• Chambers-Jones, C .L. 2020. Consumer debt, financial difficulties and poverty during COVID-19. July 29 2020.
• Herian, R. 2020. Blockchain, GDPR, and Fantasies of Data Sovereignty. Law, Innovation and Technology. Vol. 12, Issue 1, pp. 156-174
• Herian, R. 2019. Tokens of Technical Progress: Blockchains, Data Dysphoria & Fantasies of Control. The World Financial Review, Sept/Oct pp.66-69
• Herian, R. 2019. Libra, Iran and the potential end of cryptocurrencies as we know them. The Conversation, July.
• Herian, R. 2019. One Token, Two Sides: Data Dysphoria & Fantasies of Control. Critical Legal Thinking, April.
• Chambers-Jones, C .L. 2018. Digital Currencies and Organised Crime update. Financial Regulation International.
• Herian, R. 2018. Regulating Blockchain: Critical Perspectives in Law and Technology. Abingdon: Routledge
• Chambers-Jones. C. L. 2018. Brexit and Financial Services: Law and Policy, by Kern Alexander, Catherine Barnard, Eilís Ferran, Andrew Lang, Niamh Moloney, Hart Publishing, 2018, ISBN-13: 978-1509915804, pp. 240. Manchester Journal of International Economic Law, Volume 15, Issue 2, 2018
• Herian, R. 2018. Blockchain and the Distributed Reproduction of Capitalist Class Power. Money Lab Reader #2: Overcoming the Hype. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Culture, pp.43-51
• Herian, R. 2018. Regulating Disruption: Blockchain, GDPR, and Questions of Data Sovereignty. Journal of Internet Law, 22(2), pp. 1 and 8-16
• Herian, R. 2018. Politics of Blockchain. Law & Critique, 29(2), pp. 129-131
• Herian, R. 2018. Taking Blockchain Seriously. Law & Critique, 29(2), pp. 163-171
• Herian, R. 2018. Legal Recognition of Blockchain Registries and Smart Contracts. EU Commission Blockchain Observatory and Forum Report, Dec.
• Chambers-Jones. C. L. 2017. Money laundering in a Virtual World: How the UK law has responded? In: Walker, C., King, C. and Gurule, J. Asset Stripping: Responses to the Financing of Terrorism and Crime, Palgrave, 2017.
• Chambers-Jones. C. L. 2017. Financial crisis and digital currencies’, In Ryder, N. White Collar Crime and Risk: Financial Crime, Corruption and the Financial Crisis (Palgrave MacMillan, 2017).
• Herian, R. 2017. Trusts Law in a Post-Trust World: Blockchain and the (Re)imagining of Trusts Jurisprudence. Strategic Change Journal. 26(5), pp.453-460
• Herian, R. 2017. Why a blockchain startup called Govcoin wants to ‘disrupt’ the UK’s welfare state. The Conversation, November.
• Herian, R. 2016. Anything but disruptive: blockchain, capital and a case of fourth industrial age enclosure – Parts I & 2. Critical Legal Thinking, October.
• Herian, R. 2016. How blockchain could be used to make trusts more transparent. The Conversation, April.
• Day, R. & Chambers-Jones, C.L. 2016. The public face of private actions: exploring accountability in bribery and corruption disclosures by companies listed in the UK. Theorie und Praxis aus Rechnungswesen und Wirtschaftsprufung. Nationale and Internationale Enterwicklungen. Eds: Fretchrift fur Univ.-Prof. Dr. Rudolf Steckle.
• Chambers-Jones, C. L. 2014 Gambling on a virtual win. Edward Elgar Publishing, December.
• Clare Chambers-Jones .2013. Policing Cyber Hate, Cyber Threat and Cyber Terrorism. International Journal of Police Science & Management: Spring 2013, Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 74-75.
• Chambers-Jones. 2013. Cyber economic crime and commonwealth laws, International Journal of Intellectual Property Management, Vol, 6, Nos. 1 /2, Pp. 95-110.
• Chambers-Jones, C. L. 2013. Virtual world Financial Crime: legally Flawed, Law and Financial Markets Review, January, pp. 1-9.
• Chambers, C. L. 2012. Virtual Economics and Financial Crime: Money laundering in Cyberspace, Edward Elgar
• Ryder, N. & Chambers, C. L. 2009. The credit crunch – are credit unions able to ride out the storm. Journal of Banking Regulation. Vol. 11, 1 76-86.