About

Mission

The RAILS blog serves as a platform for debates and research trends in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence. Our goal is to make relevant scientific topics accessible to the broader public and thus contribute to an informed dialogue about the societal opportunities and risks of those new technologies. Both RAILS members and external authors provide information, theses and opinions.

Editorial Guidelines

Articles should generally be 1000 – 1500 words long. Editors might ask for or suggest your article to be shortened otherwise.
Although the articles should be addressed to a scientifically interested audience, they should not be scientific essays. We expect our authors to strive for an understandable, comprehensible and accessible writing style. You should explain your basic terms and concepts in simple language instead of presupposing the readers to be familiar with them. Texts from science journalism, popular science or textbooks for beginners can serve as models for articles.
Part of the editorial offer is that we proofread and copy edit all articles before publishing them. This is not to be misunderstood as an interference in the author’s creative process, but rather seen as a free service and review: we want to assist the authors in making their ideas as clear to their readers as possible. In addition, we can help to identify potential for cutting down the length of a text. We do not make any changes to the content, but instead try to achieve an optimal linguistic standard – in dialogue with the authors.
We reserve the right to modify or – in consultation with the authors – change suggestions for titles and subtitles if this seems suitable for editorial reasons.
No footnotes, please. However, hyperlinks to other content are useful and permitted.
We publish all contributions under the Creative Common License CC BY-NC-ND. By submitting an item to us, you consent to its use in this form. A remuneration of the authors is not provided.
A second use of the articles is allowed and welcomed. However, you should always refer to the first publication in the RAILS blog and link to the text if necessary. We are also open to considering cross-posts from other platforms if suitable.

Team of editors

Editors in chief

Martin Ebers

Martin Ebers is Professor of IT Law at the University of Tartu (Estonia) and permanent research fellow at the Humboldt University of Berlin. He is co-founder and president of the Robotics & AI Law Society (RAILS). In addition to research and teaching, he has been active in the field of legal consulting for many years. His main areas of expertise and research are IT law, private law, insurance law and European law. Most recently, he co-published the books „Algorithms and Law“ and „Contracting and Contract Law in the Age of Artificial Intelligence“.

Michael Kolain

Michael Kolain is a legal expert and conducts research at the interface between law, technology and legislation. He currently works as advisor for digital policy for a parliamentary group in the German Bundestag. Previously he coordinated the research area “Digital Transformation” at the German Research Institute for Public Administration. He is interested in the regulation and implementation of digital technologies in both private and public sector – with current focus on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Data Law, GreenIT, cybersecurity and EGov/GovTech.

Editors

Anna Laura Askanazy

Anna Laura Askanazy studied law in Münster and Paris. She is currently a research assistant at the law firm BHO Legal in Cologne, focusing on data protection law. She also works as a research assistant at the Institute for Information, Telecommunications and Media Law at WWU Münster in the public law department.

Clemens Danda

Clemens Danda is a postdoctoral researcher with a demonstrated history of working in Private law and Cultural Property law as well as regular publishing in high profile journals. He is currently engaged in independent research in the field of AI Liability while pursuing an LL.M. in IP & ICT law at the KU Leuven in Brussels. He holds a PhD in Private law from the University of Vienna and a MA in Art History from the Technical University Berlin.

Jakob Hüger

Following his law studies in Freiburg, Germany, he is working on his PhD thesis on the regulation of artificial intelligence with a focus on the prevention of discrimination effects. In parallel, he works in the field of data protection and IT law at a commercial law firm in Frankfurt.

Inka Knappertsbusch

Inka Knappertsbusch holds a PhD from Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg and a LL.M. from WWU Münster. She works as a attorney at law in the field of labour and employment law, data protection law and legal tech at CMS Deutschland in Köln. She is co-president of “leaders network”, editor at “The Impact Lawyers” and maybe the first German lawyer to have an implanted microchip.

Mateusz Kupiec

Following his law studies at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow (Poland), he is working on his PhD dissertation on the children’s position as data subjects under the EU data protection law framework. Mateusz is a researcher affiliated with the Institute of Law Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences (ILS PAS) and works in a data protection department of a leading Polish law firm.

Shu Li

Shu Li is Assistant Professor of Law and AI at Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University Rotterdam. He is also Visiting Research Fellow at the Legal Tech Lab, University of Helsinki and Adjunct Professor at City University of Hong Kong.

Ioana Nicolae

Ioana is currently working as a Legal Engineer in the Technology & Innovation of a law firm. She has a master’s degree in Law & Economics and wrote her thesis on finding the correct balance between encouraging innovation and protecting human rights under the European Commission’s regulation proposal on Artificial Intelligence.

Hannah Ruschemeier

Hannah Ruschemeier is a junior professor of public law with a focus on data protection law / digital law at the Fernuniversität Hagen.

Chiara Streitbörger

Chiara is doing her legal clerkship in Berlin, where she also previously studied law at Humboldt University. Meanwhile, she is finishing up her PhD dissertation (University Potsdam) in antitrust law with a focus on algorithms and AI. Chiara has also been working as a research assistant in international business law firms in the field of competition law as well as media and telecommunication law.

Paul Jakob Suilmann

Paul is a doctoral candidate at the Humboldt University of Berlin and a research assistant at the Chair of Civil Law, Business, Competition and Intellectual Property Law, Prof. Dr. Katharina de la Durantaye, LL.M. (Yale) at the Free University of Berlin.

Gabriel Udoh

Gabriel Udoh is a researcher in AI law, policy, and ethics. He is currently a PhD candidate in Autonomous Weapons Systems and International Humanitarian Law at Europa Universitat Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder), His research spans across a wide range of areas, including smart city technologies, digital colonialism, privacy, afri-tech, and more. He is committed to designing technologies that prioritize the needs and well-being of humans. He possesses an intermediate level of proficiency in Python, allowing him to understand sophisticated software solutions to complex problems.

Former editor(s)

Marta Gamito Cantero (founding editor)

Associate Professor of IT Law at University of Tartu & Research Fellow at the School of Transnational Governance (EUI).