Workshop

Registration Open: Workshop on ‘Digital and AI Governance at a Time of Geopolitical Upheaval’

• Keynote: Payal Arora

Date

Thursday 15 October 2026 - Friday 16 October 2026

Address

Anna van Buerenplein
Anna van Buerenplein 301
2595 DG The Hague

Room

2.21 | Auditorium

Leiden University College and the Erasmus Center of Law and Digitalization, with the support of the Sectorplan SSH-Breed on Digitalization and the Netherlands Network for Human Rights Research, are pleased to announce, Digital and AI Governance at a Time of Geopolitical Upheaval, a two-day workshop taking place on 15 and 16 October 2026 in the Auditorium of Leiden University College The Hague. 

Registration

The workshop is open to students, staff, and members of the public. Attendance is in person and free, but registration is required.

Sign up

Goal of Workshop

Geopolitical upheaval is not merely a backdrop to digital and AI governance: the two processes are mutually constitutive. Regulatory initiatives spanning the entire digital and AI value chain are being harnessed as instruments of geopolitical influence, while geopolitical tensions are simultaneously constraining, accelerating or undermining governance efforts between rival powers. Amidst the upheaval, the vocabulary of human rights has emerged as one focal area of contestation, simultaneously serving as a normative framework, a site of geopolitical instrumentalisation, and a terrain over which the meaning of rights themselves is fought over. Meanwhile, non-state entities and communities are mobilising to transform both geopolitical configurations and digital/AI governance.

This workshop seeks to examine these dynamics from a diversity of disciplinary and actor perspectives, bringing together scholars in law, international relations, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, media and communication studies, technology studies, and related fields. The aim is to nurture a multidisciplinary conversation that critically assesses the relationship between geopolitical upheaval and digital/AI governance.

Programme

The full programme, including panels and speakers

Workshop Conveners

• Emelie Andersin, Ph.D. Fellow in International Law, Leiden University College The Hague

• Dr. Julia Krämer, Assistant Professor of Data Protection Law and Empirical Legal Studies, Erasmus School of Law

• Dr. Densua Mumford, Assistant Professor of International Relations, Leiden University College The Hague

• Dr. Alberto Quintavalla, Associate Professor of Innovation and Public Law, Erasmus School of Law

• Dr. Barrie Sander, Assistant Professor of International Law, Leiden University College The Hague