Digital Sovereignty: Storm Clouds are Gathering
Monash Law's Centre for Commercial Law and Regulatory Studies (CLARS) was delighted to co-host an in-person seminar examining the concept of digital sovereignty.
Concerns about reliance by states, businesses, and individuals on a handful of large US tech companies had been longstanding. However, recent geopolitical and technological developments, including disruptions to global supply chains and rapid advancements in AI, had made this an increasingly hot topic. Even the US, which was home to the world’s three largest hyperscale cloud providers, was now seeking to impose restrictions on specific IT actors considered to pose a strategic threat.
Chaired by Professor Chris Marsden of Monash Law School Digital Law Group, in association with the Centre for Commercial Law and Regulatory Studies (CLARS) and the Monash Business School's Opportunity Tech Lab, the seminar on Tuesday 4 March 2025 featured keynote speaker Professor Christopher Millard (Queen Mary University of London).
Keynote speaker
Professor Christopher Millard is Professor of Privacy and Information Law and head of the Cloud Legal Project in the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London. He is also Co-Director of the Microsoft Cloud Computing Research Centre and is Senior Counsel to the law firm Bristows.
Christopher has over 40 years of experience in technology law, both in academia and legal practice. His first book, Legal Protection of Computer Programs and Data (Sweet & Maxwell, 1985), was one of the earliest international comparative law works in the field and he has since published widely on legal and regulatory issues relating to information technology, e-commerce, the Internet, data protection, and privacy. Since 2008 his main research focus has been cloud computing. He is editor and co-author of Cloud Computing Law (Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, 2021), is a founding editor of the International Journal of Law and IT, and is an emeritus editor of International Data Privacy Law.
Christopher is a Fellow and former Chairman of the Society for Computers & Law, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a past-President of the International Federation of Computer Law Associations, and a past-Chair of the Technology Law Committee of the International Bar Association.
Before he joined Bristows in 2008, Christopher was head of the global privacy and data protection practice at Linklaters and prior to that he was a partner at Clifford Chance. He has twice been designated Internet and eCommerce Lawyer of the Year by the International Who's Who of Business Lawyers.
Chair
Professor Chris Marsden is Professor of Artificial Intelligence, Technology and the Law, Director of the Digital Law Group at Monash University, and Associate Director for Global Governance of the Data Futures Institute. He was Co-Director of the Warwick-Monash Alliance Brussels Effect of the AI Act workshops in 2023, and co-director of the Human Futures in the Age of AI Monash-Penn State Alliance conference in April 2024. He was appointed to serve on the ARC College of Experts 2024-26. He also serves as an expert in the International Expert Consortium on the Regulation, Economics, and Computer Science of AI (RECSAI) 2024-5.