Professor Mireille Hildebrandt

Research Professor at Vrije Universiteit Brussels (VUB) and Co-Director of the Law, Science, Technology & Society studies Research Group at the Faculty of Law and Criminology

Professor Mireille Hildebrandt is Research Professor on ‘Interfacing Law and Technology’ at Vrije Universiteit Brussels (VUB). She is the Co-Director of the Law, Science, Technology & Society studies Research Group at the Faculty of Law and Criminology. She also holds the part-time Chair of ‘Smart Environments, Data Protection and the Rule of Law’ at the Institute for Computing and Information Sciences (iCIS) of the Science Faculty of Radboud University Nijmegen since 2011. Working on the cusp of law and computer science is core to her research, which is focused on the implications of automated decisions, machine learning and mindless artificial agency, notably concerning the implications for law and the rule of law in constitutional democracies. She has published 5 scientific monographs, 23 edited volumes or special issues, and over 100 chapters and articles in scientific journals and volumes. In 2018, Professor Hildebrandt was awarded an ERC Advanced Grant for research on ‘Counting as a Human Being in Computational Law’ (COHUBICOL; www.cohubicol.com). The project runs from 2019-2024 at Vrije Universiteit Brussels (law), partnered with Radboud University (computer science) and is focused on the use of machine learning for argumentation mining and quantified legal prediction, and the use of blockchain to develop self-executing code for regulation and contracts (‘smart regulation’, ‘smart contracts’).