PhD Position in the area of Law and Technology within the MSCA Doctoral Network Project HARNESS

The Faculteit Recht en Criminologie, Department Metajuridica, Research Group Law, Science, Technology & Society is looking for a PhD-student with a doctoral grant. 

More concretely your work package, for the preparation of a doctorate, contains: 

We invite you to apply for a PhD position supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Network HARNESS - Harnessing AI and Data-Intensive Technologies , funded by the European Commission’s Horizon Europe programme. You will be based in Brussels, Belgium and will enroll as a PhD student at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). The main line of research will be the “Interplay of the GDPR and the New Data Laws: Between Fundamental Rights and Data Markets”. The PhD research is expected to focus on exploring potential ways to develop an integrated legal approach to data with the aim to facilitate better regulation based on reconciling internal market interests with EU fundamental rights.

HARNESS is an international, interdisciplinary and cross academic-industry training network hosted across Spain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Italy and Belgium (MSCA Doctoral Network) formed to train a new generation of 13 Doctoral Candidates (DCs) as PhD graduates in the disciplines of law, ethics or computer science with the common goal of researching methods and tools to make Integrated Assessments of risks and impacts for current Data intensive and AI technologies.

Research Fields:

EU digital policy, Technology regulation, European Data Strategy, European Data Protection Law, AI Act

Key Responsibilities:

• Conduct research as outlined in the project’s objectives under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Paul De Hert and produce high quality research outputs.
• Engage in secondments as part of the project’s training activities (6 months at Utrecht University under the co-supervision of Dr. Christina Santos, 3 months remote at Brightflag)
• Contribute to academic publications, project reports, deliverables and other dissemination activities.
• Participate in structured training programs and network-wide events organized by the consortium.
• Collaborate with international partners and other Doctoral Candidates within the network.

For this function, our Brussels Humanities, Sciences & Engineering Campus (Elsene) will serve as your home base.