In a new blog, Simone van der Hof, Professor of Law and Digital Technology, explains why existing European regulations such as the GDPR, AVMSD, and DSA still fail to adequately protect children from the risks of social media and digital services.

AI:Liner develops cutting-edge digital solutions for sewer asset management while ensuring responsible AI adoption through comprehensive social science research and ethical frameworks.

With the growth of cybercrime in recent years, there is an urgency to gain insight into the money laundering process and the actors involved. This study focusses on the money laundering process and maps the actors involved in banking malware and ransomware.

eLaw is a research institute of interdisciplinary scholars who explore issues at the intersection of law, technology and society.

Carlotta Rigotti, Postdoc researcher at eLaw, and Eduard Fosch-Villaronga, Associate Professor at eLaw, delivered a lecture on AI and non-discrimination, engaging students with the Debiaser demo.

Carlotta Rigotti, post-doc researcher at eLaw – Center for Law and Digital Technologies, and Professor Clare McGlynn , Durham University, have co-authored a new article in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, introducing the concept of meta-rape and exploring its potential treatment under criminal l…

RESOCIAL ('User vulnerabilities and Resilience on SOCIAL media platforms and the metaverse: a sociolegal and design perspective', an NWO-NWA Synergy Grant Project) seeks to identify, measure, and thereby mitigate human vulnerabilities on social media platforms (including the metaverse and immersive…

AI4Europe is one of the projects, funded under the Horizon Europe programme, that is responsible for the management, development and facilitation of the AI-on-Demand Platform (AIoD).

The Computers, Privacy and Data Protection Conference (CPDP) is the world’s leading multidisciplinary event on privacy and data protection. CPDP brings together experts to explore cutting-edge legal, regulatory, academic, and technological developments in the field, providing a premier platform for…

Whether implicitly or explicitly, we all have ideas about how the law is supposed to function, whose interests it should represent, and what role it should play in society. This project explores the ways in which these questions are addressed in the works of the Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus…

This book examines how gender relations were regulated in ancient Near Eastern and biblical law. The textual corpus examined includes the various pertinent law collections, royal decrees and instructions from Mesopotamia and Hatti, and the three biblical legal collections. The book explores issues beginning…

We give you 10 reasons why you should choose for Leiden University and should study the advanced master programme Law and Digital Technologies.

The map application includes information from old and new buildings archaeological projects. This makes it possible to investigate whether water facilities (wells, cisterns) and waste facilities (cesspits, sewers) were the privilege of Leiden’s wealthy elite in the late 16th and 17th centuries or whether…

To be eligible for Law and Digital Technologies at Leiden University, you must meet the admission requirements as published on this page.

Research into the development of privacy-friendly care games for children.

This volume publishes the proceedings of the eleventh annual University of Chicago Oriental Institute Seminar. It uses the sphere of legal institutions as a prism through which to consider gender relations in the ancient world, both in the Near East and beyond. It examines how similar issues were manifested…

In November, Springer published a book on The Future of Drone Use, edited by dr. Bart Custers, associate professor at eLaw, the Center for Law and Digital Technologies of Leiden University.

Data reuse and big data: a taxonomy for personal data reuse.

eLaw organises a range of impactful conferences bringing together experts from law, technology, and society to discuss major developments in the field.

On 25 Februarry 2021 Hart Bloomsbury brings out a monograph by Frans-Willem Korsten: Arts as an Interface of Law and Justice: Affirmation, Disturbance, Disruption. Its working title was 'Annoyance' but that did not sell. A sign in itself; most struggles for justice have been considered as annoying.

The project will investigate the use of Artificial Intelligence in the labour market, and how biases in hiring and promoting processes based on personal characteristics are potentially reproduced with AI-based systems.

How did digital intermediality symbolise and facilitate the transfer of content from popular culture into policy statements and vice versa in the period between 1945 and the new millenium?

The project “Digital Materials” is about the conception, exploration and analysis of possibilities to make digital processes directly operative and tangible in physical materials and examines how the fiction of these “Digital Materials” could affect on figures of interaction between human subjects and…

Gianclaudio Malgieri, Associate Professor of Law & Technology at eLaw, is co-author of the article 'Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) 2.0: A Manifesto of Open Challenges and Interdisciplinary Research Directions' which has been awarded the 2025 Best Paper Award by Information Fusion.

Dr. Gianclaudio Malgieri, Associate Professor of Law & Technology at eLaw, is co-author of the article “Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) 2.0: A Manifesto of Open Challenges and Interdisciplinary Research Directions” which has been awarded the 2025 Best Paper Award by Information Fusion.

Our courses embrace developments in technology. Our teachers adapt technological innovations to their discipline, and we keep our teaching up to date on rapid developments in the digital world.

This project investigates how robot testing facilities could help to optimize the regulation for robot technologies.

AI MAPS adopts a freedom and social well-being perspective and focuses on three themes to address key security challenges; Social disorder and public nuisances in neighbourhoods, High-impact crime, and Crowds and events.

Learn new ways to analyse and study cultures and languages and provides insight into how digital methods and artificial intelligence (AI) are changing our personal lives and societies in the minor Digital Humanities and Artificial Intelligence.

On 15 February 2024, Alexandros Sarris defended the thesis 'International Law and Governance of the Arctic in an Era of Climate Change'. The doctoral research was supervised by Nico Schrijver and Freya Baetens.

On 19 December 2024, Dr Constanta Rosca’s monograph, ‘Digital Arms for Digital Consumer Harms: Mapping Legal and Technical Solutions for Dark Patterns in EU Consumer Law’, was published as an open access book by the institutional, library-led publisher of Maastricht University, Maastricht University…

Our researcher and PhD candidate Helena Ursic was interviewed with Druzina, one of the biggest weekly newspapers in Slovenia.

On 16 December 2019, Jan-Harm de Villiers defended his thesis 'The Anthropomorphic Hegemony of Subjectivity: Critical Reflections on Law and the Question of the Animal'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. P. Cliteur.

On Tuesday 11 February, the European Data Protection Supervisor, Mr. Wojciech Wiewiórowski, visited eLaw, - center for Law and Digital Technologies at Leiden Law School to give a lecture on facial recognition systems and data protection in Europe.

Gianclaudio Malgieri's paper entitled 'The unfair side of Privacy Enhancing Technologies: addressing the trade-offs between PETs and fairness', coauthored with Alessandra Calvi from Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Dimitris Kotzinos from Paris Cergy University, is set to be presented at this week's prestigious…

In collaboration with the De Waag Technology & Society, Simone van der Hof of the Centre for Law and Digital Technology (eLaw department) will develop a code for digital children's rights based on the example of the age appropriate design code in Great Britain.

PhD defence

Tech company Eyeball collects images and data on young amateur football players on a large scale. But is this allowed? Bart Custers, Professor of Law and Data Science, and Gerrit-Jan Zwenne, Professor of Law and Digital Technologies, comment on the issue in ‘NRC’ newspaper.

Damien Van Puyvelde and Paul Oling explore how government intelligence agencies can effectively collaborate with the private technology sector to meet their evolving technological needs, focusing particularly on emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing.

The Netherlands has DigiD, Portugal ‘de Cartão de Cidadão’, and Ireland MyGovID. Europe now wants one uniform digital identity card - the same for all Member States. For the Dutch government, the European successor to DigiD is a prestige project. State Secretary Van Huffelen wants to roll out an app…

DIGIFOOD is a transnational research project that investigates how data governance can support equitable and sustainable digital food systems. Around the world, digital technologies are transforming agriculture. Sensors in soil, satellites in space, and mobile phones in farmers’ hands are generating…

Carlotta Rigotti co-authors a new publication on EU law and image-based sexual abuse in the German Law Journal.

During the final event of the PRE-Class Rechtsgeleerdheid, secondary school pupils organised a mock trial on the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on society. Together with the audience, they explored the possibilities and pitfalls of AI. ‘They all did a wonderful job.’