Law on Trial 2026: AI and the Future of the University - Panel Evening
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck Main Building, Malet Street
This Law on Trial Panel Evening brings together leading experts to critically explore the implications of AI for universities.
Free to register.
The emergence of generative AI is already causing sweeping changes to law, politics, the economy, and the private lives of individuals. It presents unprecedented challenges for universities, in both education and research, reshaping the economy, the legal and other professions, and the public sphere, in ways that demand a response.
The pace, complexity, and obscurity of change has made informed critical reflection difficult. The dominant narrative across the sector so far has been that, since everyone else is doing it, we must ‘embrace the positives’ of AI.
But should we be so enthusiastic to integrate these addictive slop-bots into every facet of university life? How might AI change British universities? What genuine benefits, if any, might AI bring? What harms and injustices does it entail? What dangers does it threaten? And how should we respond?
This Law on Trial Panel brings together leading experts to explore these and other questions about AI's implications for universities, followed by an audience Q&A.
The Panel will be preceded, at 5-6pm, by a Publishing Workshop on 'AI, Peer Review and Getting High-quality Papers Published', with Dr Alex Lancaster (Deputy Managing Editor, MDPI), aimed at Doctoral and Early Career researchers.
Speakers:
Fred Cowell - is Reader in International Law, and Head of Research for the Faculty of Business and Law, Birkbeck, has published extensively on human rights law, and was recently a Labour Councillor in Lambeth with responsibility for Digital, Data and Resident Experience.
Rob Farrow - is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Educational Technology at the Open University, and has published extensively on the potentials and challenges of new technologies in open and critical educational contexts.
Chris Newfield - is Research Director of the Independent Social Research Foundation, and has published extensively on the problems of neoliberalism and its impact on universities.
Savva Pistolas - is an AI Researcher and Cybersecurity Consultant, and is currently doing postgraduate studies in Applied AI at the University of Warwick.
Amanda Wilson - is Associate Professor in the School of Law, University of Warwick, and has published extensively on restorative justice, therapeutic jurisprudence, and criminal law and justice.
Chairs: Victoria Ridler and Craig Reeves (Birkbeck Law School)
This event is generously sponsored by the following journals: Philosophies, Laws, Societies, AI, Education Sciences, Economies, Trends in Higher Education, Social Sciences, AI in Education, AI for Society, Encyclopedia.
Speaker Biogs:
Dr Frederick Cowell is Reader in International Law at Birkbeck. He was previously the Assistant Dean for Recruitment at the School of Law and Criminology, and is currently Head of research and Innovation for the Faculty of Business and Law. He completed his PhD at Birkbeck in 2015 a year after joining the department, which looked at Postcolonial theory and the legal powers of international institutions. Since then he has developed a general specialism in Public International law and the institutional protection of human rights. He edited the volume Critically Examining the Case Against the 1998 Human Rights Act (2017, Routledge: Abingdon), and has authored numerous articles on human rights and public international law in leading scholarly journals. He has also served for many years as a Labour Councillor for the London Borough of Lambeth.
Dr Rob Farrow is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Educational Technology, Open University. He holds several degrees in Philosophy, including a PhD from Essex on the normative foundations of the critical social theories of Jurgen Habermas and Axel Honneth. Since 2009 Rob has worked on many high profile research projects in education and educational technology. These have EU funded projects like Mobile Technologies in Lifelong Learning (MOTILL); European Unified Framework for Accessible Lifelong Learning (EU4ALL); BizMOOC and ENCORE+ which involved working with a range of European partners. He has also worked on many projects funded by philanthropy with a focus on open education, such as the Hewlett funded Open Learning Network (OLnet); OER Research Hub; OER World Map; Global OER Graduate Network (GO-GN) and UK Open Textbooks projects. Rob is a keynote speaker who has presented his work in many countries, and has acted as a referee for numerous academic journals, including International Education Studies, British Journal of Educational Technology, Journal of Online Teaching and Learning, Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice and Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. He is an associate editor of the Journal of Interactive Media in Education.
Prof Christopher Newfield was Distinguished Professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara and is now Director of Research at the Independent Social Research Foundation in London. He has written a trilogy of books on the university as an intellectual and social institution: Ivy and Industry: Business and the Making of the American University, 1880-1980 (Duke University Press, 2003); Unmaking the Public University: The Forty Year Assault on the Middle Class (Harvard University Press, 2008); and The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), is co-editor of The Limits of the Numerical (University of Chicago Press, 2022), and is co-author of What Metrics Matter? Academic Life in the Quantified University (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023). His current projects involve the cultures of “AI,” literary and cultural knowledge, the future of higher education, and the culture of social equality.
Savva Pistolas is an AI Researcher and Cybersecurity Consultant at Turtledove Cyber, and is currently doing postgraduate studies in Applied AI at the University of Warwick.
Dr Amanda Wilson is Associate Professor of Law at Warwick Law School, and an international, interdisciplinary scholar with particular expertise in restorative justice, therapeutic jurisprudence, and criminal law and justice. She was previously a Marie Sklodowska Curie WIRL-COFUND Fellow at Warwick University Institute of Advanced Study, and subsequently a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow at Warwick Law School from 2020 to 2023. She has published widely on legal and ethical theory in scholarly journals including Modern Law Review, Social & Legal Studies, and Journal of Critical Realism.
Contact name: Craig Reeves
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