Professor Sophie Stalla-Bourdillon

Previously taught IT law and Data Protection Modules

Sophie spent a decade as a tenured track professor of Information Technology Law and Data Governance at the University of Southampton, where she held the Chair in IT Law and Data Governance up to 2022. She is now visiting professor within Southampton Law School. In 2023, she became Co-Director of the Brussels Privacy Hub (BPH), an academic research hub at VUB within the wider LSTS research group. Alongside her academic career, Sophie has extensive industry experience, having worked at Immuta for six years, where she led the Legal Engineering team. In this role, she focused on the legal and ethical implications of data operations in analytics and AI environments, as well as the impacts of compliance automation. 
Sophie is the author and co-author of several legal articles, chapters and books on platform regulation, data protection and privacy and other IT law-related topics. Sophie has led the legal effort of many interdisciplinary research projects, including EU FP7, Horizon 2020, and UK EPRC-funded research projects covering regulation of digital identify schemes, data sharing, anonymisation and pseudonymisation-related requirements and practices, and value-by-design approaches to system design, such as trustworthiness, data protection and explainability by design.

Sophie has served as Editor-in-chief of the Computer Law and Security Review, a leading international journal of technology law, and is now honorary consulting editor. She has also served as a legal and data privacy expert for the European Commission, the Council of Europe, the Organisation for the Cooperation and Security in Europe, and for the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.