Ignacio Cofone appointed Associate Professor in Law and Regulation of AI

The Faculty is delighted to announce that Ignacio Cofone has been appointed Associate Professor in Law and Regulation of AI in conjunction with the Institute for Ethics in AI and Reuben College.

Ignacio Cofone is currently the Canada Research Chair in AI Law & Data Governance at McGill University, where he teaches Privacy Law and AI Regulation. He is also an Affiliated Fellow of the Yale Law School Information Society Project. His work has received distinctions including the Justice Charles Gonthier Fellowship, Best Privacy Papers for Policymakers award, Norton Rose Fulbright Faculty Scholar, and McGill Principal’s Prize for Outstanding Emerging Researchers. In 2020, he worked with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada in launching an overhaul of Canadian privacy law in view of AI.

His work is at the intersection of law, technology, and ethics, particularly in the regulation of AI. It evaluates how law can shape and adapt to AI-driven social and economic changes with special attention to data protection, privacy, and antidiscrimination. His research program at Oxford will focus on designing regulatory mechanisms that prevent and redress nonmaterial AI harms and on policy design that fosters human-centred AI innovation.

Ignacio holds a JSD from Yale Law School and a PhD (rer pol) from Erasmus University Rotterdam and Hamburg University, as well as common law and civil law degrees. His research has been published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, Stanford Technology Law Review, and University of Toronto Law Journal. His book, “The Privacy Fallacy: Harm and Power in the Information Economy” (Cambridge University Press 2023), proposes how data protection and privacy law should respond to AI data processing.

He says of his appointment:

I am so thrilled to take on this new role. Oxford's commitment to excellence and interdisciplinary collaboration makes it an ideal place to research AI regulation and teach the next generation of legal scholars and practitioners. I particularly look forward to working with new colleagues and students towards understanding and shaping the legal frameworks that will guide the future of technology.

He will take up his post in September 2024.