Call for Papers: Law, AI and Regulation (LAIR) Conference 2026, 11-12 June 2026

Call for Papers: Law, AI and Regulation (LAIR) Conference 2026, 11-12 June 2026

The Law, AI and Regulation (LAIR) Conference is an international forum bringing together scholars, practitioners, and policymakers working at the intersection of law, artificial intelligence, and regulation. The first LAIR Conference was hosted in Rotterdam on 8 – 9 June 2023 and featured keynotes, panel discussions, and lively debate on the challenges and opportunities of governing AI in an evolving regulatory landscape. Building on the success of this inaugural event, the LAIR Conference will return for its second edition in 2026, continuing to foster interdisciplinary dialogue on responsible AI governance.

Date- Thursday 11 Jun 2026, 09:00 – Friday 12 Jun 2026, 15:30

Type- Conference

Spoken Language- English

LAIR is an international academic conference spanning over two days, the 11th and 12th of June 2026, at the Erasmus University Rotterdam campus. The conference pays particular attention to the engagement of rigorous, interdisciplinary works. The programme features 24 paper presentations organised across six thematic panels.

This marks the second edition of LAIR. The inaugural conference, held in 2023, brought together 22 paper presentations and featured a keynote by Professor Gillian Hadfield. Selected contributions from that edition were subsequently published in an edited volume on Digital GovernanceOpens external.

Call For Papers

The adoption of the EU Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA) marks a defining moment in the legal and regulatory landscape for AI. While the AIA aims to ensure that AI systems are safe, trustworthy, and aligned with fundamental rights, its implementation raises profound legal, ethical, societal, and governance questions. The LAIR 2026 conference explores these questions by inviting critical and multidisciplinary perspectives on how the AIA will shape and be shaped by regulatory, institutional, technological, and societal developments.

To address and critically examine these issues, LAIR 2026 invites contributions from law, philosophy, political science, sociology, computer science, and related fields. We welcome theoretical, normative, empirical, and interdisciplinary research that reflects on:

• Theoretical and conceptual perspectives on the AI Act: its regulatory logic, risk-based approach, and underlying assumptions about law, technology, and society.
• Regulation by design and technical compliance mechanisms: conformity assessments, transparency by design, fundamental rights impact assessments, and the practical challenges of implementation.
• The Digital Omnibus: analysis of its impact on the AIA, GDPR, and broadly in the digital governance sphere.
• The role of private actors and institutions: national competent authorities, notified bodies, standardization organizations, and private governance mechanisms.
• Accountability and explainability: tensions between innovation, transparency, and trade secrets; the limits of explainable AI within the Act’s framework.
• Social and democratic dimensions: legitimacy, participation, and the politics of lawmaking, standard-setting, and enforcement.
• Empirical analyses of early implementation, compliance practices, or comparative perspectives with other regulatory models (e.g., U.S., OECD, or Council of Europe approaches).

Timeline

Please send your abstract submission, along with a short bio of the (co-)author(s) to: lair@law.eur.nl

For more details, refer here