Sunday Surprises

* PhD positions

Keep calm and get a Doctoral Degree.

--> EUI Doctoral Programme is calling for PhD candidates. Application deadline: 31 January 2017. The Application Form for the 2017-2018 academic year (starting 1 September 2017) is active from 2 November 2016 until 31 January 2017. For more information, check here. 

--> New 3 year Funded PhD positions in Communications Law: PhD position in Communications Law at IViR on the meaning of established values and concepts such as editorial control, independence and liability in light of news media personalisation. The application deadline is 31 of January 2017 and the position ideally commences in spring 2017. More details can be found here. 

*  Seminar

3rd February 2017, London

The Rise of Web Blocking Orders in the UK: Empirical Evidence Perspectives. 

Speaker: Professor Lilian Edwards (Strathclyde University). 

Sign up here, and more details can be found here. 

* Conference announcement 

CIPIL Annual Spring Conference 2017 -- Intellectual Property and Human Rights

Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge, 10 West Road

Saturday, March 11th 2017, 10.00am-5.00pm

This conference seeks to explore the interplay between IP and human rights. Beginning with an introduction to the different human rights instruments, their relations with European and national law, as well as an exploration of the methods used (proportionality, balancing of rights), the programme goes on to consider particular interactions, tensions and conflicts: the relationship between copyright and human rights (in particular freedom of expression and science); the relationship between trade marks and health in the context of plain packaging; the relationship between copyright and a host of other rights in discussion of intermediary liability (Angelopolous); and the relationship with patents and the right to health.e).

Booking: For further information and to book a place via the electronic booking system please see this link or email Claire Hill (ch771@cam.ac.uk).

* Postdoctoral program

The Project on the Foundations of Private Law at Harvard Law School is seeking applicants for the Qualcomm Fellowship in Private Law and Intellectual Property.

The Qualcomm Fellowship is a two-year, residential postdoctoral program specifically designed to identify, cultivate, and promote promising scholars early in their careers with a primary interest in intellectual property and its connection to one or more of property, contracts, torts, commercial law, unjust enrichment, restitution, equity, and remedies. Fellows have been selected from among recent graduates, young academics, and mid-career practitioners who are committed to pursuing publishable research likely to make a significant contribution to private law scholarship.

Fellows devote their full time to scholarly activities in furtherance of their individual research agendas. In addition, fellows contribute to the intellectual life of the Project and the Harvard Law School community through mentoring students, presenting their research in and attending faculty workshops and seminars, helping to organize and participating in Center events, and blogging.

Application details can be found in the attached documents. For more information, please contact Bradford Conner, conner@law.harvard.edu. Applications must be received by March 1, 2017. For more informations see here and here. 

* Call for Papers

Deadline 27th January

4th Winchester Conference on Trust, Risk, Information and the Law

Date: Wednesday 3 May 2017

Venue: West Downs Campus, University of Winchester, Winchester, Hampshire, UK

The Fourth Interdisciplinary Winchester Conference on Trust, Risk, Information and the Law will be held on Wednesday 3 May 2017 at the West Downs Campus, University of Winchester, UK. The overall theme for this conference is: Artificial and De-Personalised Decision-Making: Machine-Learning, A.I. and Drones

Keynote speakers:

Professor Katie Atkinson, Head of Computer Science, University of Liverpool, an expert in Artificial Intelligence and its application to legal reasoning, and John McNamara, IBM Senior Inventor, who will speak on 'Protecting trust in a world disrupted by machine learning’.

Papers and Posters are welcomed on any aspect of the conference theme, which might include although is not restricted to:

* Machine learning and processing of personal information;

* Artificial intelligence and its application to law enforcement, legal reasoning or judicial decisions;

* Big Data and the algorithmic analysis of information;

* Implications of the Internet of Things;

* Machine based decision-making and fairness;

* Drone law and policy;

* Trust and the machine;

* Risks of removing the human from - or leaving the human in - the process;

* Responsibility, accountability and liability for machine-made decisions.

The conference offers a best poster prize judged against the following criteria: 1) quality, relevance and potential impact of research presented 2) visual impact 3) effectiveness of the poster as a way of communicating the research. Proposals for workshops are also welcome. Workshops offer organisers the opportunity to curate panels or research/scholarship activities on an aspect of the conference theme in order to facilitate interdisciplinary discussion.

This call for papers/posters/workshops is open to academics, postgraduate students, policy-makers and practitioners, and in particular those working in law, computer science & technology, data science, information rights, privacy, compliance, statistics, probability, law enforcement & justice, behavioural science and health and social care.

Abstracts for papers are invited for consideration. Abstracts should be no more than 300 words in length. Successful applicants will be allocated 15-20 minutes for presentation of their paper plus time for questions and discussion. Please note that accepted poster presenters will be required to email an electronic copy of their poster no later than a week before the conference. Accepted poster presenters will also need to deliver the hard copy of their poster to the venue no later than 9am on the date of the conference to enable it to be displayed during the day. Workshop proposals should summarise the workshop theme and goals, organising committee and schedule of speakers, panels and/or talks. Proposals should be no more than 500 words. Workshops should be timed to be 1.5-2 hours in length.

Abstracts and proposals, contained in a Word document, should be emailed to trilcon17@winchester.ac.uk. Please include name, title, institution/organisation details and email correspondence address. The deadline for submission of abstracts/proposals is Friday 27 January 2017. Successful applicants will be notified by 17 February 2017. Speakers/poster presenters/workshop organisers will be entitled to the early registration discounted conference fee of £80 and will be required to book a place at the conference by 28 February in order to guarantee inclusion of their paper/poster/workshop. Speakers will be invited to submit their paper for inclusion in a special edition of the open access eJournal, Information Rights, Policy & Practice.

To book a place at the conference, please click here to visit the Winchester University Store and click on academic conferences. For more information, please contact the conference team at trilcon17@winchester.ac.uk

Photo courtesy of Ms. Nyske Blokhuis.