Affiliate Members
LETS Lab is a diverse community of scholars, with a broad range of expertise coming from various disciplinary backgrounds and Universities in the UK and overseas.
Dr Argyro Karanasiou
Dr Argyro Karanasiou is the Director of LETS Lab and a leading expert in Information Technology Law. Her work has been at the forefront of interdisciplinary scholarship of ‘law and emerging technologies’ and has earned her visiting research affiliations with Yale Law School (ISP Alumna), NYU Law (ILI Alumna), Harvard Law (affiliate Faculty staff CopyX), Complutense Madrid (ITC).
She is actively involved in several technology policy and related initiatives in the UK and worldwide, including those concerned with the regulation of AI, one of her key research interests. In particular, she has contributed invited expert insights on a number of occasions, most notably for the Equality and Human Rights Commission (AI in recruitment – 2020), the Chatham House (Internet Governance – 2018), the US Air Force (AI & Augmented Cognition – 2018), the Royal Society (Machine Learning – 2016) and the Electronic Frontiers Foundation (Free Trade Agreements and Human Rights – 2016).
Prof Olga Martin-Ortega (University of Greenwich)
Dr Olga Martin-Ortega is Professor of International Law at the University of Greenwich. She leads the Business, Human Rights and Environment Research Group and conducts research on multinationals and human rights, public procurement and human rights, post-conflict reconstruction and transitional justice.
Professor Martin-Ortega is a member of the Board of Trustees of Electronics Watch and The Corporate Justice Coalition. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of the London Universities Purchasing Consortium and the Steering Committee of the International Learning Lab on Procurement and Human Rights. She has worked with the UK Home Office Modern Slavery Prevention Unit, the Local Government Association, NHS Commercial Solutions, Unison, and the international organisations OSCE and International Labour Organisation, as well as numerous civil society organisations.
Ghislaine Boddington (body>data>space / University of Greenwich)
Ghislaine Boddington is an artist, curator, director and presenter, specialising in the future of human, body responsive technologies and immersive experiences. She is co-founder and Creative Director of body>data>space (fka shinkansen), a pioneering interactive creative design collective advocating the living body be at the heart of the digital debate since the early 1990s. With a background in dance and performing arts and a long-term focus on the blending of our virtual and physical bodies, she engages in highly topical digital issues for our living bodies, including telepresence, biometrics, identity and representation of the self/other, connected body enhancements, digital intimacy and collective embodiment of the future.
Ghislaine's practice-led outputs and presentations, under the heading "The Internet of Bodies", lead to public facing outputs. She co-presents bi-weekly as Studio Expert for BBC Digital Planet (fka Click) and the BBC World Service flagship technology and society radio programme and podcast.
Jorge is an Associate Professor in Contemporary Performance at the University of Greenwich as well as the co-founder and Executive Director of ZU-UK (together with Artistic Director Persis Jadé Maravala). Over the past two decades, Jorge's research has addressed a fast growing yet significantly under researched area of investigation: immersive, participatory and interactive theatre.
His research has helped advance the subject area, nationally and internationally, through original, significant and rigorously researched publications in books, reports, conference papers and PAR outputs.
Dr Jorge Lopes Ramos (ZU-UK/ University of Greenwich)
Prof Steven Haines (University of Greenwich)
Steven is Professor of Public International Law in the University of Greenwich. His research today is focused principally on Ocean Governance and the maintenance of safe and secure seas (although he continues to work in the fields of International Humanitarian Law and the law relating to international security). Prior to taking up his current post in Greenwich, he spent four years in Geneva, on the Management Board of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy.
Since 2011, he has acted as Legal and Military consultant to the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack, drafting International Guidelines on the Military Use of Schools in Conflict Zones (the core of the Safe Schools Declaration) that are now endorsed by almost 90 states globally. He joined Save the Children International’s Civil-Military Advisory Board in 2017, becoming its Chair in 2018. With a specialist legal interest in the Law of Armed Conflict Applicable at Sea, he was elected as President/Chair (2019) of the UK Group of the International Society for Military Law and the Laws of War.
Marianne Franklin is Professor of Global Media and Politics at Goldsmiths (University of London), and Chair of the Global Internet Governance Academic Network. Former Chair of the Internet Rights and Principles Coalition she is a current member of the IRPC Steering Committee.
Her research explores how digital networked technologies both collide and collude with transformations in society, culture, and politics at the online-offline nexus working from a multidisciplinary background in History, Music, Social and Political Theory, Politics, and Cultural Studies
Prof Marianne Franklin (Goldsmiths University of London)
Prof Roger Brownsword (King’s College London/ Bournemouth University)
Roger Brownsword holds professorial positions in Law at King’s College London (where he is Director of TELOS) and at Bournemouth University; he is an honorary Professor in Law at the University of Sheffield; and he is currently a visiting professor at City University Hong Kong. He co-edited Law and Human Genetics Regulating a Revolution (1998), Regulating Technologies (2008), and both the Cambridge Handbook on Human Dignity (2014) and the Oxford Handbook on Law, Regulation and Technology (2017); and his many sole-authored publications include Contract Law: Themes for the Twenty-First Century (OUP, 2006), Rights, Regulation and the Technological Revolution (OUP, 2008), Law, Technology and Society: Re-imagining the Regulatory Environment (Routledge, 2019) and Law 3.0: Rules, Regulation and Technology (Routledge, 2020). His latest book, Rethinking Law, Regulation and Technology is due for publication in 2022.
He is the founding general editor (with Han Somsen) of Law, Innovation and Technology as well as being on the editorial board of a number of international journals; and, in addition to serving as a specialist adviser to parliamentary committees, he has been a member of various working parties, most recently the Royal Society Working Party on Machine Learning.
Dr Aysem Diker Vanberg (Goldsmiths University of London)
Dr Aysem Diker Vanberg is a Lecturer in Law at the Department of Law, at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is specialised in commercial law, has an LLM in European and International Law (University of Bremen), an LLB (University of Ankara, Turkey) and a PhD in Competition Law (University of Essex).
Aysem’s doctoral thesis entitled "An analysis of the application of Article 102 Treaty on the Functioning of European Union to platform-based businesses: Google as a case study" draws on Competition Law, Commercial Law, EU Law, economics and IT Law in order to assess the suitability of EU competition law to digital platforms such as Google and Facebook. She is a recognised authority on competition law, data protection law, digital markets and online platforms. Her work has been cited by academic and legal practitioners in the UK and globally.
Dr Kim Barker
(Open University)
Dr Kim Barker is a Senior Lecturer and the Head at the Open University Law School, specialising in internet law including online violence against women, online misogyny, online hate speech, regulation of online content (especially via social media platforms and online games), and intellectual property law (copyright, and digital content). Dr Barker's research in respect of online misogyny and the online abuse of women has been cited around the world.
Her research expertise has been cited in Parliamentary reports and debates, as well as international reports relating to online violence against women, and online misogyny, and has been relied upon by non-governmental organisations, as well as by Governments.
Maria Jesus Gonzalez Espejo
(Instituto de Innovación Legal)
Maria is a world expert in Innovation, Legaltech, Strategy and Legal Marketing. Managing partner at Instituto de Innovación Legal, a consultancy from which she advises many law firms, lawyers and organisations of the legal sector on innovation, digital transformation and legaltech. She has organised successful innovative events such as several hackathons and The Legal Design Challenge, a pioneering program that has introduced the Legal Design Thinking methodology in Spain.
She is the Vice President of the European Legaltech Association (ELTA) and co-organizer of Madrid #LegalHackers. She is the Vice-president of the Latin American Legal Professionals Women Association (AMJI). She is recognised by the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) as one of the 5 most influential women in Legal Tech.
Dr Taimoor Khan
(University of Greenwich)
Dr. M. Taimoor Khan is a Senior Lecturer in Cyber Security at the University of Greenwich, where he is member of Internet of Things and Security Research Group and leading the application of formal methods to assure software security. He holds a PhD in Software Engineering (Johannes Kepler University, Austria), a Master in Advanced Distributed Systems (University of Leicester), and a Master in Computer Science (Islamia University, Bahawalpur, Pakistan)
Dr. Khan has worked as a Lecturer in Cyber Security at the University of Surrey, as a postdoc at the MIT CSAIL, USA and at the Alpen-Adria University, Austria. His research has won awards in the most premier research venues including CICM 2012, WF-IoT 2016 and ICS-CSR 2019, to name a few.
Louise is a Senior Lecturer in Law (University of Greenwich) and the co-founder of the Innocence Project London (IPL), a pro-bono law clinic dedicated to investigating wrongful convictions. The Innocence Project London was the first UK member of the international Innocence Network based in New York and became a charity in August 2020.
As well as researching aspects of the criminal justice system, Louise’s research interests extend to innocence work as clinical legal education, protected characteristics for hate crimes, as well as the prevention and suppression of acts of terrorism in international law.
Dr Louise Hewitt
(Innocence Project London/University of Greenwich)
Dr. Jing Bian is a Senior Lecturer in Financial Law in the School of Law & Criminology, University of Greenwich. She has published widely on comparative financial regulation, as well as China related issues.
Dr. Jing Bian has a track record with research and practical projects for international institutions and international transactions. She has solid practical and commercial experiences. She is a Trust and Estate Practitioner in England and Wales, a full member of the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. She is a special consultant for Guangdong, Hong Kong, Macau Great Bay AI and Law Institute, and an expert at the Shenzhen Mediation Expert Base.
Dr Jing Bian
(University of Greenwich)
Dr. Ben Hunter is an Associate Professor in Criminology at the University of Greenwich. His research to date has focused on criminal careers, white-collar and corporate crime. He is currently conducting a two year Fellowship funded by the Leverhulme Trust on the topic of corporate environmental crime. Using data on companies who have violated environmental regulations, Ben’s analysis focuses on the patterns related to repeat environmental offending by companies.
Dr Ben Hunter
(University of Greenwich)
Dr Renginee G. Pillay is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Law at the University of Greenwich. She holds an LLB from the London School of Economics and Political Science, an LLM in International Business Law from University College London, and a PhD in Law from the University of Kent. Renginee is the author of the monograph The Changing Nature of Corporate Social Responsibility: CSR and Development – The Case of Mauritius (Routledge, 2015). Her main research interests lie in the areas of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Corporate Governance and Business and Human Rights.
Dr Renginee Pillay (University of Greenwich)