Burkhard Schafer is Professor of Computational Legal Theory at the University of Edinburgh and Director of the SCIPT Centre in IT and IP Law. He studied logic, theory of science, computer linguistic and law at the universities of Main, Munich and Lancaster before joining the School of Law of the University of Edinburgh in 1996. His research interests straddle the use of technology in the justice system (legal informatics/Rechtsinformatik) and the legal regulation of technology (IT law, Informationsrecht), both from an interdisciplinary and comparative-legal perspective. He was Pi or Co-I in projects funded through FP7, EPSRC, ESRC, AHRC and Nordforsk totalling over £12m, most recently the RCUK funded large R&D Cluster “Creative Informatics” which supports the use of data science for individual artists and companies in the creative industries in Scotland.

He has been visiting professor at the universities of Sao Paolo and Leuven, and is a member of the DataEthics group of the Alan Turing Institute, member of the technology committee of the law Society of Scotland and member of the expert panel of AI4People. His current research centres on the role of emotion and creativity in legal technology and the jurisprudential and social underpinnings of legal AI.

Website: https://www.law.ed.ac.uk/people/professor-burkhard-schafer

Twitter: @mchardcastle