Tell us about your work?
I teach various law related modules on the QMUL-BUPT joint program, in China, and occasionally I teach cybersecurity law at QM’s Centre for Commercial Law.
The legal modules I teach impact the so-called digital economy, or the Internet or cyberspace. Over the years my teaching has covered a range of laws, from the relatively mundane, addressing issues such as what contract law would consider a ‘conspicuous presentation’ of terms and conditions in online contracts (which for some reason Uber is still getting persistently wrong!) to the quite hard, such as patenting software-based technologies when these have ‘technical features’ enough, to the wickedly hard, such as content moderation on various digital platforms, an enormous challenge that defies logic everywhere.
Tell us how you got into EE&CS?
I had my first glimpse of the Internet at a friends’ workplace (DEC) in Chicago, way back in 1988. It was riveting seeing how easy communication and sharing was on the Internet compared to ‘snailmail’ and faxes. Watch this space, my friend said.
10 short years later, the industries I was a lawyer in, music and film, were fighting losing battles against streaming technologies, instead of embracing them, so I jumped ship. I took a masters in ‘Computer and Communications Law’ at QMUL’s Centre for Commercial Law Studies (CCLS), in 2000. About half a decade after I had graduated, and was working in Hong Kong, I had a call from CCLS asking if I could teach law at a newly instituted joint programme in Beijing. This was in 2006 and it was a pioneering multi-disciplinary course, engineering and law. Here I am still.
What brought you to Queen Mary?
My association with Queen Mary goes way back to 1987, when I was completing my first master’s in law (LL.M). I was at UCL, but the degree was inter-collegiate then and I was taking International Trade Law with Prof Clive M Schmitthoff, who taught at QMUL. In 1999, I returned to CCLS for my second LL.M, to upskill for the digital economies and soon after started teaching at the QMUL-BUPT JP in China
What’s the best thing about your work?
I really like the collegiality at QMUL. I came from a combative and cut-throat culture, with an ‘eat what you kill’ mantra and the change to a collaborative workplace is refreshing.
Technology law is endlessly stimulating and fascinating. The disruption is very real and there are new laws tumbling out of various legislatures in alarming quantities that seek to address all manner of actual or perceived harms. A few years ago, for example, the ‘SMART’ Act bill was introduced at the US Congress, “Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology Act”. The purpose of this law is to ‘prohibit social media companies from using practices that exploit human psychology or brain physiology’, to create internet addiction! Really, autoplay does that? On a more serious note, the reshaping of the world by technology and the solutions, legal and otherwise, are thought provoking and keeping me very engaged.
When not at EECS, what are your interests/what do you enjoy doing?
In a few sentences, I like keeping up with my very spread-out family and friends on many continents and reading incessantly on law, on technology and on politics. I was a marathon runner but have transitioned to gentler hiking now. I am really looking forward to a hike I’ve booked next year in Bhutan and I plan to do the Annapurna circuit in 2024, the Everest basecamp in 2025 and more. I just love the Himalayas and all other mountains.
I really like extending my range of cooking, learning from YouTube, Instagram and Tiktok videos, that took all the pain out of looking at tedious recipe books with a mile long list of ingredients. If only my teaching could be made as painless!