Václav Janeček wins the Jacques Derrida CEFRES Platform Award

Associated people

Vaclav Janecek
Václav Janeček (DPhil in Law, 2017) won the Jacques Derrida CEFRES Platform Award for his research on data ownership.

The Jacques Derrida CEFRES Platform Award annually rewards the best article in social sciences and humanities published in English or French. Born from the desire to support young researchers from the Czech Republic who endeavour to embed their research within the European and international networks, this initiative from the CEFRES Platform aims to award an article in social sciences and humanities published in a high-level peer-reviewed academic journal.

The contest is organised by the French Embassy in the Czech Republic and Dr Karel Janeček, a Czech mathematician, entrepreneur, and anti-corruption campaigner.

Václav’s article ‘Ownership of personal data in the Internet of Things’ has been selected by the CEFRES Platform Committee (among 19 nominated publications) as the best paper in social sciences and humanities under the framework of Jacques Derrida Award.

‘The significance of issues concerning a data economy and online privacy reaches far beyond black-letter law’, Václav says. ‘I think this award marks the importance of interdisciplinary and innovative research methods. In this regard, I was very lucky to find an exceptionally motivating environment for this project at the Digital Ethics Lab and am now even more committed to keep working on these questions in the future.’

The awards ceremony took place on 26 June 2019 in the Pantheon of the National Museum (Prague) in the presence of the Ambassador Roland Galharague and a Nobel Prize laureate Jean-Marie Lehn.

In his comment on the ceremony, Václav said:


It was an incredibly humbling experience to celebrate my work in the Pantheon of our National Museum—a hall dedicated to our greatest thinkers and the most significant intellectual leaders. It made me wonder though whether any of these outstanding minds would consider data ownership a problem worth exploring. It is good to pause sometimes and ponder about the broader relevance of one’s academic work for our society.’

Vaclav's latest blog post on his research into the trading of data can be found on the Oxford Business Law Blog.