Dr Asma Vranaki
LLB (LSE), LLM (QMUL), BVC (City), DPhil (Oxon), Fellow (HEA)
Expertise
I am an empirical and interdisciplinary scholar who specialises in all aspects of Digital Law and Regulation. A core theme in my work is how emerging and disruptive digital environments can be effectively regulated.
Current positions
Senior Lecturer in Law
University of Bristol Law School
Contact
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Biography
I am a Senior Law Lecturer at the University of Bristol Law School. Other current positions include the Policy and Regulation Co-Lead of the UKRI-funded national Research Centre on Privacy, Harm Reduction and Adversarial Influence Online ('REPHRAIN'); the Law School Research Ethics Committee member, the University's Information Governance & Security Advisory Board member and the REPHRAIN Ethics Board member. Current and recent expert appointments include memberships of the UK Government Online Safety Initiative Expert Group and the UK Information Commissioner's Office PETs Expert Forum.
Before joining Bristol, I taught various law units including Contract Law, Information Technology Law and Legal Skills and Methods at undergraduate and post-graduate levels at several leading UK universities including the LSE, the University of Oxford and Queen Mary University of London. In the past, I have held Law Lectureship positions at Anglia Ruskin University and City University where I taught on the Bar Practice Course.
I was the General Data Protection Regulation Fellow at the Centre for Information Policy Leadership, a global privacy and data policy think tank and worked on a project which explored the General Data Protection Regulation's implementation challeges.
Prior to that, I was a post-doctoral researcher at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies of Queen Mary, University of London where I worked on the EC-funded 'Accountability for Cloud' research project.
I have been called to the Bars of England & Wales and Mauritius. I have practised as a commercial barrister. I hold degrees including an LLB (Hons) from the LSE, an LLM in Computer & Communications Law from QMUL and a DPhil in Law from the University of Oxford.
Research interests
I am an empirical and interdisciplinary scholar who specialises in all aspects of Digital Law and Regulation. A core theme in my work is how emerging and disruptive digital environments, practices and technologies, such as social media, machine learning, connected ecosystems and cloud computing, can be effectively regulated.
In recent years, my work has explored the broad range of data privacy law challenges raised by data-driven operations including automated decision-making; profiling; commercial surveillance; facial recognition technology; 'Big Data' analytics; opaque, transborder and multi-actor processing chains; connected ecosystems and responsible and lawful data stewardship. Through empirical analyses of these complex, contigent and mutable problematics within particular sectors like financial services, Ad Tech and social media, I have developed insightful, innovative and original insights into the variable roles of law and other regulatory interventions in safeguarding data privacy rights in specific contexts. Here, I have also shed new light, both from empirical and theoretical perspectives, on the enforcement challenges faced by data privacy regulators in such contexts.
My other areas of work include online harms regulation; digital copyright adjudication and enforcement; presence of plural regulators in digital 'regulatory spaces' and balancing competing rights and interests in online environments (e.g. data protection vs competition).
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
8116 EPSRC EP/V011189/1 REPHRAIN - A Vranaki
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
University of Bristol Law SchoolDates
01/10/2020 to 31/05/2024
REPHRAIN: REsearch centre on Privacy, Harm Reduction and Adversarial INfluence online
Principal Investigator
Role
Co-Investigator
Description
The REsearch centre on Privacy, Harm Reduction and Adversarial INfluence online (REPHRAIN) will bring together the UK's substantial academic, industry, policy and third sector capabilities to address the current tensions…Managing organisational unit
Department of Computer ScienceDates
01/10/2020 to 31/08/2024
Publications
Recent publications
30/05/2024A Decision-Making Process to Implement the ‘Right to Be Forgotten’ in Machine Learning
Privacy Technologies and Policy - 11th Annual Privacy Forum, APF 2023, Proceedings
Regulating Social Network Sites
Regulating Social Network Sites
Data: A New Direction: Joint REPHRAIN and CGLI Consultation Response
Facilitating plausible deniability for cloud providers regarding tenants' activities using trusted execution
Social networking site regulation
Rutgers Computer & Technology Law Journal
Teaching
LAWDM0070 Information Technology Law