Scholar in residence March – September/October 2026
Will visit KTH three times during this academic year, one week per visit: in March, May, and late summer/early autumn.
Lachlan Urquhart is Senior Lecturer in Technology Law and Human-Computer Interaction, School of Law. He is Founder and Director of the Regulation and Design (RAD) Lab at the Institute of Design Informatics. He is a Director of the Centre for Research into Information, Surveillance, and Privacy (CRISP) and was Director of the Scottish Research Centre for Intellectual Property and Technology Law (SCRIPT) (2020-2025).
His main research interests are in the socio-technical aspects of designing, living with, and regulating emerging information technologies, particularly around sustainability, privacy and cybersecurity. He has a multidisciplinary background in computer science (PhD) and law (LL.B; LL.M) and has studied at the Universities of Edinburgh, Strathclyde, and Nottingham. He has published widely, including books Accountable Design: Bringing Law into Human Centred Computing (Cambridge University Press: 2026 – In Press) and Law, Policy and the Internet (with Lilian Edwards and Catalina Goanta) (Hart/Bloomsbury: 2026 – In Press) and over 70 articles in leading venues in human computer interaction, technology law, and computer ethics.
He has worked on a portfolio of large interdisciplinary projects totalling nearly £17m, including leading a £1.2m 2.5 year project on the right to repair for the internet of things and projects on designing responsible natural language processing, emotion and facial recognition in smart cities, smart home cybersecurity and designing trustworthy autonomous systems.
During his visit, he will continue exploring the interplay between regulation and the design of new technologies, such as the Internet of Things and AI. This work examines how to account for legal values in design processes and builds on his prior research on privacy by design, cybersecurity, and now AI regulation. As part of this visit, he will present his new book, Accountable Design: Bringing Law into Human-Centred Computing, while in Stockholm.
Lachlan is collaborating with colleagues on sustainable HCI and its relationship to the intersection of digital and environmental EU regulations. They are comparing their work on using ideation decks as a design method to support critical reflection on regulation and to consider the future of such reflexive methods.
Lachlan is also interested in exploring digital transformation driven by AI, IoT, and robotics in rural settings in Scotland and Sweden, and plans to hold an exploratory workshop on this topic in Stockholm. He also plans to build longer-term collaborations with colleagues in Stockholm by exploring opportunities for collaborative grants and publications. Find out more on his website.Find out more on his website.
Contact: lachlan.urquhart@ed.ac.uk
New Books:
- Accountable Design: Bringing Law into Human-Centred Computing (Cambridge University Press: 2026)
- Law, Policy and the Internet with Lilian Edwards and Catalina Goanta (Hart Bloomsbury: 2026)
