This course familiarizes you with the body of European Union law that together makes up the rulebook for digital technologies in the internal market. In recent years, the EU has modernized its regulatory frameworks to shape digital technologies in line with societal needs and individual rights. This intradisciplinary course explains the objectives and the architecture of core regulations which govern digital infrastructures, data, content, and power in the EU. The approach to adopt detailed regulation on digital technologies sets the EU apart from other countries, notably in the field of artificial intelligence. Defining regulatory instruments are covered in more depth in order to acquaint you with their scope of application, key definitions, obligations as well as enforcement mechanisms. The course prepares you to critically discuss the merits of European Union law in relation to transnational digital technology adoption as well as to compare it with legal approaches adopted elsewhere, in particular in the US, China, and other regions. 

In this course we address the fundamentals of technology governance and law, including governance of technology, as well as governance by, through and with technology. The course observes the material character of law, including the affordances of legal texts and everyday practices, and reciprocally observes the law-like character of material things, such as digital infrastructures. The course proceeds from the introduction to critical methods and political economy, to focused examinations of socio-technical architectures and institutional dynamics germane to and involved in technology governance today. Based on the possibility that technological assemblages themselves constitute normative architectures, the course inquires i) into concepts of governance such as power, sovereignty, autonomy, and ii) into modes of governance such as standardization, competition, interoperability, as well as ‘by design’ approaches, digital choice architectures and cryptoeconomics. By the end of the course, you will have comprehensively explored the socio-political discontents as well as opportunities posed by contemporary regimes of technology governance and law in global context.  

The course Complexity and risk focuses on how complex, tightly coupled techno-social systems produce risks, how society adopts to being a ‘risk society’. You will learn about how ideas and understandings of risk are shaping society. You will learn about the social, economic, political, and legal theories of how technological risks are defined and measured. You will be able to understand and handle the epistemic challenges of decision-making on risk and technology, such as the fact that diagnostic and probability calculations need to be done under conditions of radical uncertainty and sometimes ignorance. You will learn methods to turn unstructured uncertainty into quantifiable and manageable risk. You will be introduced to tools and principles of risk management and the extent to which they allow for effective and legitimate action to prevent risks or to manage them. The course focuses on the applications of risk management models in the field of health and environmental risk and other non-digital technologies, as well as on risks specific to the digital society.  

This course critically explores AI, its implications and how it is governed, from a number of different perspectives. You are introduced to the key building blocks of AI and the relevant legal frameworks. The novelty of this course, however, is its focus on external perspectives on the implications and governance of AI. Building on the rich expertise of both students and lecturers, the course is designed to stimulate critical reflection on broader issues stemming from AI development, that are underrepresented in popular discourse. This includes the way in which AI reinforces structures of oppression, dependency and structural discrimination. It also discusses failure of many initiatives to govern AI – from the law, to ethics, to more technical fixes – and the limitations of how they address harm and structural injustices. 

This topic covers the management ecosystems – particularly the platform ecosystems – thoroughly. The course will start with explaining different kinds of ecosystems and the role of interdependency as well as the basics of networked industries, and then will follow the main underpinnings of platforms in terms of their pricing structures and growth patterns. Then, platform competition, and its modularity, architectures, and designs will be discussed; finally moving onwards to the platform competition and strategies. We will also be covering how the internal governance of platforms is managed in a variety of ways. 

The main objective of this course is to train young talents with much needed expertise in the interface of law, economics, finance, and information technologies. The past decade witnessed significant technological developments with wide-ranging applications in financial markets. The enabling technologies for financial technology (fintech) are often a combination of artificial intelligence (AI), digital automation, cloud services, cryptography, distributed ledgers, and big data analysis. The most prominent applications of such technologies are the use of AI in finance, digital assets, and cloud services for banks and other financial institutions.  

The ability of digital choice environments to steer and shape human behaviour is receiving increasing (regulatory) attention. The ability to shape human behaviour in digital environments is sometimes seen as helpful ‘technology-enabled scaffolding’ for human behaviour, other times such attempts are seen as more sinister manipulations. But how do we ethically evaluate all the different ways in which digital environments can exert influences on human behaviour in the digital society? Answering such a question requires a lot of conceptual work because so many different types of influence exist, each of which comes with different normative implications. We therefore investigate the differences and similarities between e.g., persuasion, coercion, nudging, and manipulation. 

This course will provide a deep-dive into the EU’s landmark Digital Services Act (DSA), with a particular focus on the protection of fundamental rights online. The course will take a critical approach to the EU regulation of online platforms under the DSA, examining platform regulation through the lens of international and European human rights law. A number of specific issues will be examined, including platform liability and the tackling of illegal content online, promoting access to justice and due process online, aligning content moderation with fundamental rights principles, the risk-based approach to platform regulation, and the promotion of transparency and accountability.  

In this unique Advanced Master's programme, you enjoy a higher degree of freedom regarding your final project in terms of context, collaboration, and output. The final project can take the following forms: 

• A traditional Master’s thesis, demonstrating high level academic, societal- or policy-oriented research output, grounded in scientific research.  
• A mix of written and non-textual outputs, such as software, datasets, hardware, or a policy and implementation guideline, etc. Such non-standard output should have sufficient documentation outlining the underlying analyses, data collection, etc. 
• In terms of context, it can be:  

• A stand-alone master thesis, or  
• A self-standing project  

• in the context of an ongoing research project/group at the Amsterdam Laws School  
• an external project
• an independent, stand-alone project

• In terms of collaboration, the final thesis can be either an individual work, or a group collaboration, if certain conditions are met.  

We offer thesis development workshops to help you advance your thesis project in terms of content, context, collaboration, and provide them with feedback. We provide literature research support via making a dedicated librarian available for literature research and methods consultation. Furthermore, the Law School has developed a resource available to all programmes which covers important topics for skill development related to thesis work, such as academic integrity and research methods.