Law, AI, and Regulation (LAIR) conference: critical perspectives on the AI Act

Law, AI, and Regulation (LAIR) conference: critical perspectives on the AI Act
Rotterdam | 11 th and 12th of June 2026

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).

About the conference
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.
The conference is supported by Dutch Sector Plan: Rebalancing Public & Private Interests and
Erasmus Center of Empirical Legal Studies.

Timeline
Deadline for abstract submission (500 words) February 28
Notice of acceptance and invitation to conference March 27
Conference date June 11-12
Extended/full paper deadline May 31

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.