• Commissie Meijers | Amsterdam | commissielid | 2021-03-01 - present

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I am Sarah Eskens, a legal scholar researching and teaching in the broad field of law and technology. In terms of the law, I focus on the rights to privacy, data protection, and freedom of expression, which includes the right to receive information, and media law. As I studied Dutch and EU law, I am an expert in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or the Algemene Verordening Gegevensbescherming (AVG), e-Privacy Directive, Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD), proposal for a Digital Services Act (DSA), proposal for a Regulation on Artificial Intelligence (AI Act), articles 8 to 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and articles 7 to 11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (CFEU). I wrote my dissertation at the Institute for Information Law (Instituut voor Informatierecht – IViR), University of Amsterdam, titled The Fundamental Rights of News Users: The Legal Groundwork for a Personalised Online News Environment. I am currently interested in recommender systems/personalisation technologies on news websites and social media, online disinformation, data retention by telecom providers to combat crime, large-scale surveillance by intelligence services, exposure notification apps for covid-19, and online proctoring tools. A core question in all these domains is how to balance individual rights with other rights and public interests and which legal safeguards we can introduce to maintain the balance.

I work as an Assistant Professor in Law and Technology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU Amsterdam), within the Department of Transnational Legal Studies. At the VU Amsterdam, I coordinate the master specialisation International Technology Law. I coordinate and teach the course Big Data, Human Rights and Human Security (which next year will be called Data, Privacy and Human Rights). I also teach a module on individuals and technology in the master course Technology Law. Furtermore, I coordinate the internships and master theses for the ITL specialisation.