Law, AI and Regulation (LAIR) Conference 2026

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 Governance. 

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. 

The AIA introduces a complex framework that categorizes AI systems by risk, mandates transparency, and allocates responsibilities across developers, deployers, and regulators. Yet, key challenges remain. The merging of product safety with fundamental rights [1], the delegation of complex, normative questions to standardisation bodies [2], the practical aspects of its implementation [3], and the technical challenges that characterise it, are only some of the open questions that require scholarly contributions. In addition to that, the AIA’s interactions with other frameworks, such as data protection, medical devices regulation, and platform regulation only serve to raise further questions about coherence, legitimacy, and the broader digital governance of AI [4]. 

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). 

[1]: Isabel Kusche, ‘Possible Harms of Artificial Intelligence and the EU AI Act: Fundamental Rights and Risk’ [2024] Journal of Risk Research, accessed 1 April 2025; Karen Yeung, ‘Can Risks to Fundamental Rights Arising from AI Systems Be “managed” alongside Health and Safety Risks? Implementing Article 9 of the EU AI Act’ (Social Science Research Network, 3 October 2025), accessed 7 October 2025. 
[2]: Kostina Prifti and Eduard Fosch-Villaronga, ‘Towards Experimental Standardization for AI Governance in the EU’ (2024) 52 Computer Law & Security Review 105959. 
[3]: Claudio Novelli and others, ‘A Robust Governance for the AI Act: AI Office, AI Board, Scientific Panel, and National Authorities’ (2025) 16 European Journal of Risk Regulation 566. 
[4]: Kostina Prifti and others (eds), Digital Governance: Confronting the Challenges Posed by Artificial Intelligence, vol 39 (TMC Asser Press 2024), accessed 1 April 2025. 

Timeline 

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

Financial aid 

The costs of the conference are fully covered for all presenters. In addition, we are able to offer a €120 accommodation reimbursement for presenters travelling to the Netherlands. The reimbursement is limited to one presenter per paper and is subject to the submission of a valid accommodation invoice.  

Publication of conference proceedings 

Selected papers from the conference will be invited to submit their full paper for a special issue on the conference theme. More information on the special issue and the applicable journal will be provided after the notice of acceptance. 

Please direct all inquiries to lair@law.eur.nl. 

Funding Statement 

This conference has been funded by the Small Grants Scheme of the research initiative on Rebalancing Public & Private Interests and Erasmus Center of Empirical Legal Studies of Erasmus School of Law and the sector plan for law funding of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Research.