Prof. Dr. Marco Giacalone

Prof. Giacalone contributes to teaching, research and dissemination activities concerning artificial intelligence, digitalisation and the transformation of legal and judicial systems. His expertise and extensive experience in interdisciplinary and EU-funded research make him particularly well suited to perform these tasks.

Prof. Giacalone’s research at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) focuses on digitalisation and access to justice, artificial intelligence and law, digital justice, and technology-supported dispute resolution. Within the Department of Private and Economic Law (PREC), he is Research Professor and Co-Director of the Digitalisation and Access to Justice (DIKE) Research Group, together with Prof. Jachin Van Doninck. The group brings together more than 20 researchers working at the intersection of law, technology and access to justice. Prof. Giacalone also supervises and supports the research of postdoctoral researchers and PhD candidates in these fields.

Since his first EU project in 2013, Prof. Giacalone has developed an extensive interdisciplinary network of academic researchers, judicial actors, public authorities, legal professionals and technology experts across Europe and beyond. He has been involved in 17 European and international research projects, several of which are currently ongoing, with responsibilities ranging from scientific coordination and project management to methodological design, stakeholder engagement, pilot implementation and dissemination.

He has also served as a Programme Committee member for two of the leading international interdisciplinary conferences in Law and Technology: the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law (ICAIL) and the International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems (JURIX). He is a co-organiser of the Artificial Intelligence for Access to Justice (AIDA2J) workshop at ICAIL and JURIX.

Prof. Giacalone is a Council Member of the European Law Institute (ELI) and is actively involved in its work on the digital transformation of justice. Within ELI activities, he has contributed to and coordinated work concerning Access to Justice and Digitalisation, as well as Online Dispute Resolution, Privacy and Personal Data Protection.

His record of successful participation in European and international research initiatives, together with the development of the DIKE Research Group, reflects a long-term research agenda centred on the interaction between private law, private international law, access to justice and emerging technologies, with particular emphasis on the ongoing digitalisation of justice.