Annual Report 2017: Information Law Group

The Information Law Group was established in 2014-15 and seed-funded by LPS in 2015/16, in addition to its external funding from projects for the European Commission and the RDF in 2014/15. It held its second annual Seminar and other guest seminars, and first annual PhD and Work in Progress Workshops on 20 June 2016.

Six external seminars were organized in 2016/17:

• 3^rd Annual Information Law Seminar by Prof. Roger Brownsword joint event with School of Law,
• visiting speaker Hugh Tomlinson QC joint event with SCHRR,
• Jeremy Olivier from Ofcom,
• Prof. Andrea Matwyshyn from Northeastern University, 
• Dr Mélanie Dulong de Rosnay from CNRS Paris, visiting at LSE,
• Justin Walford, senior editorial counsel at News International newspapers.

 Work in progress workshops were carried out on 3 May 2017, the PhD workshop in the morning and the Work in progress workshop in the afternoon (2pm-5.30pm). By holding both on the same day, we ensure that some professors attended the PhD workshop to give comments. There were 3 PhD presentations in the morning workshop, one internal to Sussex.There were six Works in Progress presented at the afternoon workshop, 2 internal to Sussex. The two discussants included one internal to Sussex. The external presenters were from Cambridge, Hertfordshire, Leeds and Tilburg/EBU, the external discussant was from LSE.

The attendance for both workshops was in total approximately twenty (including PhD students, speakers, discussants and chairs).

In the course of planning the workshops, we also collaborated with the Crime Research Group’s first Annual lecture, which meant attendees could also attend that lecture and reception after the conclusion of the work in progress seminar. 

A significant outcome from the first Annual Seminar (2015) is that Chris Marsden has been invited to present a paper at a conference at Georgetown University in February 2018, to be published in the Georgetown Law Technology Review. The timescale reinforces the fact that continued ongoing research planning produces results over time, and the three years of our establishment has resulted in visibility.

A result of the expansion of the Group, with the recruitment of Judith and Nicolo, and our expanding links to Engineering, Informatics, SPRU, IDS and the Sussex Humanities Lab/journalism programme, is that we plan to apply for the establishment of a more broad-based interdisciplinary Centre for Information Governance Research in academic year 2017/18.