Date: May 21, 2026 (Thursday)
Time: 1pm – 2pm
Venue: Academic Conference Room, 11/F Cheng Yu Tung Tower, The University of Hong Kong
Speaker: Siddharth de Souza (Assistant Professor in AI & Society at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick)
Global Data Law has emerged to cover a variety of domains from data protection law, laws around data sharing, data access regulations, data governance frameworks, regulations around digital trade, and AI regulation. With these developments, questions around how to think about data, its infrastructure, how it is controlled, used and valued, become critical because of the power data has to influence socio-economic development.
This talk will discuss various proposals for Global Data Law from international organizations, private enterprises, and nation states including the US, China, and regional entities like the European Union. Amidst these proposals, it will discuss an increasing challenge to surface the frictions that constitute Data Law models, as they take on a ‘global’ character.
The talk will then discuss debates around data justice, which highlight how datafication has implications for questions of representation, autonomy, capabilities, and structural inequalities that exist within a digital economy. It will offer a proposal for what Global Data Law could look like if studied from a Data Justice perspective.
Siddharth Peter de Souza is an Assistant Professor in AI & Society at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick. His work explores how data is governed globally in contested and plural settings. He is the founder of Justice Adda, a law and design social venture in India where he works on matters related to access to justice, and legal empowerment. Siddharth has worked as a digital policy consultant with United Nations Development Programme and the International Development Law Organization and was previously a post-doctoral researcher at the Global Data Justice Project at Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology and Society.
Moderator: Taorui Guan (Assistant Professor & Deputy Director of the Law and Technology Centre, The University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law)
To register, please go to https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_regform.aspx?guest=Y&UEID=105653.
For inquiries, please contact Ms. Grace Chan at / 3917 4727.