Annual Report 2018: Information Law Group

A result of the expansion of the Group, with the recruitment of Judith and Nicolo, and our expanding links to Engineering, Informatics, SPRU, Library, Business School, IDS and the Sussex Humanities Lab/journalism programme, is that we  established the more broad-based interdisciplinary Centre for Information Governance Research in September 2018.  Chris Marsden is Director, with Nico Zingales and Judith Townend Deputy Directors for 2018-20.

The Information Law Group was established in 2014-15 and seed-funded by LPS in 2015/18, in addition to its external funding from projects for the European Commission and the RDF in 2014-16. Eight seminars were organized in 2017/18 (up from 6 the previous year):

• 4th Annual Information Law Seminar by Prof. Daithi MacSithigh, 
• 10 April: Professor Chris Marsden "Platform Law: Towards Regulation by OffData" 17 April: Dr Judith Townend, Sussex Law, "The state and future of media and information litigation in the English High Court" and Dr Nico Zingales, Sussex Law, "Antitrust and algorithmic nudging" 1 May: Dr Duncan Campbell, Visiting Fellow Sussex: "Social media: Disinformation and deception, and its propagation" 8 May: Prof Dean Wilson (Sussex Sociology), "Predictive Policing: A New Approach to Police Management"17 May : Annual Information Law Seminar Prof. Daithi McSithigh, "Medium Law and its Discontents" 

Work in progress workshops were carried out in autumn 2017, but followed by a very special conference in Iceland in June 2018. Members of the InfoLaw Group attended and presented at the conference ‘Digital reality – legal issues’ in Reykjavík, Iceland, on the 13^th June 2018. Speakers were from European and American universities. Professor Chris Marsden, Dr. Andres Guadamuz, Dr. Nicolo Zingales and Doctoral Researcher María Rún Bjarnadóttir represented the Group and gave presentations about their current research topics. The event was hosted by the Law Institute of the University of Iceland and was covered in leading Icelandic media outlets. The University is the alma mater of Sussex Doctoral Researcher María Rún Bjarnadóttir, who assisted with the planning of the event and organised a visit to the Icelandic Parliament. Member of Parliament Björn Leví Gunnarsson from the Pirate Party hosted the visit, where the group also met with Sussex University Alumni MP Andrés Ingi Jónsson from the Left Green Party.