Professor Sylvie Delacroix

Professor Sylvie Delacroix

Birmingham Law School
Professor in Law and Ethics

Contact details

Address
Birmingham Law School
Room 401 Arts
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Professor Delacroix’s research focuses on the intersection between law and ethics, with a particular interest in habits and the infrastructure that molds our habits (data-reliant tools are an increasingly big part of that infrastructure). 

She is considering the potential inherent in bottom-up Data Trusts as a way of reversing the current top-down, fire-brigade approach to data governance. She co-chairs the Data Trust Initiative, which is funded by the McGovern Foundation.

Professor Delacroix has served on several public policy commissions. She is also a Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute. Professor Delacroix's work has been funded by the Wellcome Trust, the NHS, Mozilla Foundation, Omidyar Networks and the Leverhulme Trust, from whom she received the Leverhulme Prize. Her latest book -Habitual Ethics?- was published by  Bloomsbury / Hart Publishing in July 2022 | @SylvieDelacroix

Qualifications

  • PhD, Cambridge University, Trinity College
  • Licenses in Law, Université Catholique de Louvain La Neuve (Belgium)
  • Candidatures in Philosophy, Facultés Universitaires Saint Louis (Belgium)
  • Post-graduate Certificate in Higher Education, University of Kent

Biography

Sylvie Delacroix joined Birmingham Law School as a Professorial Research Fellow in January 2018, coming from UCL where she was a reader in Legal Theory and Ethics, with a fractional appointment in UCL Computer Science. Prior to that Sylvie was the Evelyn Green Davis Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (Harvard University, 2004-05), a lecturer in Law in Kent University and a post-doctoral scholar in Trinity College, Cambridge University.

Sylvie Delacroix was the founding Director of the UCL Centre for Ethics and Law, which was sponsored by E&Y, HSBC, Shell, Nestle, BAE, AstraZeneca, Carillion, The European Bank of Reconstruction and Development and the Institute of Business Ethics. This initiative led her to piloting a series of inter-disciplinary think-tanks, each based on a cutting-edge public policy issue volunteered by the sponsors of the Centre, and subsequently analysed by both academics and corporates across disciplines. It is in that context that she launched the UCL Virtual Environments and the Professions Group in collaboration with colleagues in Engineering and Medical Sciences. This Group explored the use of VR technology both as a tool to gain a better understanding of the factors impacting upon professional judgment and as an ethical education tool.

In 2010 She was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize in law, awarded to recognise the achievement of outstanding researchers whose work has already attracted international recognition and whose future career is exceptionally promising. This Prize allowed her to further her commitment to a two-way relationship between legal theory and public Affairs, which can be seen at play in her work on the Palestinian constitution-making endeavour, as well as her recent work on Professional responsibility on one hand and Machine Ethics on the other.

Postgraduate supervision

Until the end of 2021, Professor Delacroix is only considering PhD proposals considering the potential inherent in ‘Data Trusts’ and/or other data sharing mechanisms.


Find out more - our PhD Law  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

Research

Much of Sylvie Delacroix’s current work calls for renewed attention to be paid to habits and their relationship to normative agency. Mostly neglected in moral and legal theory (and rarely studied empirically), such an inquiry not only conditions an adequate understanding of the moral risks inherent in any institutional structure aimed at simplifying our practical reasoning (such as law). It is also essential if we are to come to grips with the public policy challenges raised by our growing reliance upon automated systems.

Publications

Recent publications

Book

Delacroix, S 2022, Habitual Ethics? 1st edn, Bloomsbury Publishing. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781509920440

Article

Delacroix, S 2022, 'Diachronic interpretability and machine learning systems', Journal of Cross-disciplinary Research in Computational Law, vol. 1, no. 1, 9. <https://journalcrcl.org/crcl/article/view/9>

Giannopoulou, A, Ausloos, J, Delacroix, S & Janssen, H 2022, 'Intermediating data rights exercises: the role of legal mandates', International Data Privacy Law. https://doi.org/10.1093/idpl/ipac017

Delacroix, S 2022, 'Professional responsibility: conceptual rescue and plea for reform', Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, vol. 42, no. 1, pp. 1-26. https://doi.org/10.1093/ojls/gqab010

Delacroix, S 2021, 'Computing machinery, surprise and originality', Philosophy and Technology, vol. 34, no. 4, pp. 1195-1211. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-021-00453-8

Delacroix, S & Wagner, B 2021, 'Constructing a mutually supportive interface between ethics and regulation', Computer Law and Security Review, vol. 40, 105520. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clsr.2020.105520

Delacroix, S 2019, 'At a cross-roads? The courts' shifting apprehension of the vulnerability at stake in the lay-healthcare provider relationship', Journal of Medical Law and Ethics, vol. 2019, no. 2. <https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3420307>

Delacroix, S & Lawrence, N 2019, 'Bottom-up data Trusts: disturbing the ‘one size fits all’ approach to data governance', International Data Privacy Law, vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 236-252. https://doi.org/10.1093/idpl/ipz014

Delacroix, S 2019, 'Understanding normativity: the impact of culturally-loaded explanatory ambitions', Revus, vol. 35. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3241342, https://doi.org/10.4000/revus.4773

Delacroix, S, Fertleman, C, Aubugeau-Williams, P, Sher, C, Lim, AN, Lumley, S & Pan, X 2018, 'A Discussion of virtual reality As a New tool for training Healthcare Professionals', Frontiers in public health, vol. 6, no. 44. https://doi.org/doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2018.00044

Chapter (peer-reviewed)

Delacroix, S 2020, Automated Systems and the Need for Change. in S Deakin & C Markou (eds), Is Law Computable?: Critical Perspectives on Law and Artificial Intelligence. Hart Publishing, pp. 161-175. <https://ssrn.com/abstract=3880470>

Chapter

Delacroix, S, Pineau, J & Montgomery, J 2021, Democratising the Digital Revolution: The Role of Data Governance. in B Braunschweig & M Ghallab (eds), Reflections on Artificial Intelligence for Humanity. 1 edn, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 12600, Springer, pp. 40-52. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69128-8_3

Delacroix, S 2020, Preserving us from Regulatory Power? Legal Normativity and the Possibility of Agency. in C Bezemek, M Potacs & A Somek (eds), Vienna Lectures on Legal Philosophy, Volume 2: Normativism and Anti-Normativism in Law. Hart Publishing, pp. 233-250. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781509935932.ch-011

Delacroix, S & Veale, M 2019, Smart technologies and our sense of self: going beyond epistemic counter-profiling. in K O'Hara & M Hildebrandt (eds), Law and Life in the Era of Data Driven Agency. Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., pp. 75-86.

Delacroix, S & Denvir, C 2019, Virtually Teaching Ethics: Experiencing the Discrepancy between Abstract Ethical Stands and Actual Behaviour using Immersive Virtual Reality. in C Denvir (ed.), Modernising Legal Education. Cambridge University Press. <https://ssrn.com/abstract=3406739>

View all publications in research portal

Expertise

  • The intersection between law and ethics
  • Machine ethics and agency
  • AI ethics and regulation 
  • Personalised profiling and its impact on ethical agency and civic responsibility
  • Ambient computing and its impact on ethical agency and civic responsibility