ABOUT THE WINTER SCHOOL

The Digital Legal Lab, in collaboration with the Lorentz Center, organises a winter school titled “Data, personalization, and the law 2023” that will take place from 4 to 8 December 2023 in Leiden, the Netherlands. The main objective of the winter school is to do a deep dive into regulation and policy of digital technologies and build a strong network of scholars to further develop Digital Legal Studies, an emerging field of scholarship that aims to advance the understanding of how digital technologies interact with law and justice. The programme of the winter school will explore topics related to how digital technologies like algorithms, big data analytics, and automated decision-making affect individuals, markets, and society, and how regulatory regimes are catching up with the technological changes. Concretely, we will analyse how digital technologies challenge decision-making related to diverse public values, in particular fundamental rights, and how regulation is shifting from the more conventional approaches of regulating human behaviour to governing data. In addition, we will showcase how to use data analytics technology in a meaningful way to make sense of legal data and analyse legal processes in a data-driven manner. The format of the winter school will facilitate active participation and will comprise lectures, discussion groups, interactive workshops, and presentations. The programme is divided into 5 thematic blocks: i) Introduction to the Data-Centric Regulatory Paradigm; ii) The Digital Transformation of Decision-Making; iii) Digitalisation and Fundamental Rights; iv) The Potentials of the Legal Network Analysis (LNA); and v) Connecting the Dots – Towards a Joint Agenda for Digital Legal Studies, and will be delivered by renowned academics. The draft programme will be available shortly and published on this webpage.

ELIGIBLE PARTICIPANTS

The winter school is aimed at early career researchers – PhD students and post-doctoral researchers – that pursue their research projects and are interested in the above-outlined topics. We welcome participants from diverse disciplinary (law, social sciences and humanities, technical fields when relevant) and geographical backgrounds. Proficiency in English is required. To ensure the quality of discussions, the number of participants is limited. The selection committee will select participants based on the merit of the received applications (see below at Application process), with a view to ensure the best thematic fit and facilitate diversity in participation. We expect the selected participants to actively contribute to debates and present their own (PhD) research projects to other attendees. If selected, the participants also commit that they will, by the end of the week’s programme, deliver a blogpost of approximately 800 words related to their research project to be published on the Digital Legal Lab’s website. Upon completion of the winter school, the participants will receive a certificate of participation. The participation in the winter school does not grant any ECTS credits.

FEES, LOGISTICS, AND ACCESSIBILITY

The winter school will take place in person in Leiden, the Netherlands. There is no participation fee to attend. We will also cover participants’ accommodation and food for the duration of the winter school; the participants will only need to arrange their transport to and from Leiden. The Lorentz Center, where the winter school will be held, is accessible for persons with disabilities. Please do get in touch should you have further questions or requirements.

APPLICATION PROCESS

To apply, please provide us with the following documents:

• a CV (1-2 pages) that clearly states your email address where you can be reached;
• a motivation letter, in which you outline why you wish to participate and how do you plan to contribute to the winter school’s success (1-2 pages); and
• a writing sample or an extended abstract, in which you present (part of) your research project and discuss its relevance for the field of Digital Legal Studies (3-4 pages).

Please submit the three documents together as one pdf file (8 pages max) via Oxford Abstracts on the following link: https://app.oxfordabstracts.com/stages/6409/submitter. The application process runs until 25 August 2023 at 17h CEST and the applicants will be notified of the outcomes of the selection process by the end of September 2023.

If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at digitallegalstudies@tilburguniversity.edu.