Dr Hailemichael Teshome Demissie

Dr Hailemichael Teshome Demissie

Birmingham Law School
Teaching Fellow

Contact details

Email
h.t.demissie@bham.ac.uk

Qualifications

  • PhD, King’s College London, The Centre for Technology, Law, Ethics and Society (TELOS)
  • LLM (distinction), University of Warwick, School of Law
  • Graduate Certificate in Academic Practice (GCAP) (distinction), King’s College London, King’s Institute of Learning and Teaching (KILT)
  • LLB, Addis Ababa University, Faculty of Law

Biography

Dr Hailemichael T Demissie joined Birmingham Law School as a Teaching Fellow in January 2023. He was a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Bedfordshire where he taught Intellectual Property Law both at the undergraduate and postgraduate level. He also taught Employment Law and Business Law. Prior to his lectureship at the University of Bedfordshire, Dr Demissie had served at the University of Gondar where he was appointed as Associate Professor of Law following his tenure as a Senior Research Fellow at the Nairobi-based inter-governmental think-tank, the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS). He spent two years at the Tshwane University of Technology in Pretoria, South Africa as postdoctoral research fellow before moving to ACTS. His academic engagements were preceded by a long career in the judiciary in Ethiopia where he served as a high court and appellate court judge.

Dr Demissie presented and contributed several papers at international fora including the UNIDO Experts Meeting in Vienna; GLOBELICS conferences in Hangzhou, China (2012), Ankara, Turkey (2013), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (2014) Havanna, Cuba (2015); Global Bio-economy Summit, Berlin, Germany, 2015 and 2017; UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) Expert Group Meeting on the regulation of nanotechnology, 2020.

Postgraduate supervision

Dr Demissie is interested in proposals dealing with the law and technology interface, the ethics and regulation of emerging technologies and legal tech.

Research

Dr Demissie’s overarching main research interest is on the governance of the opportunities afforded by emerging technologies and on harnessing the power of these technologies to tackle the pervasive and persistent challenges of poverty, inequality and sustainability. Dr Demissie has especially stressed on the need for a new global policy on enhanced benefit-sharing to ensure the equitable distribution of the benefits of mature as well as emerging technologies. The disruptive power and the likely global impact of emerging technologies makes the compelling case for interrogating the efficacy of current global public policy and practice on the governance of emerging technologies. The nascent forms of a new form of benefit management seen in the trials of Universal Basic Income and taxation on technology are early signs of an evolving global policy on a new kind of technology governance. In the evolution of the new technology governance, it should be a priority that this development does not end up with yet another divide similar to the ones that were unfolding during the IT and biotech revolutions. The power of technology at the moment is such that another divide in the trails of the ‘digital divide’ is simply not acceptable. However, such an eventuality is not impossible. The need to stay the course in the debate for justice, rights, fairness and societal welfare at the global and local level is ever more pronounced in the age of the exponential advance of emerging converging technologies. The debate around scientific innovation and technological development needs to refocus on the distress /predicament of those to be affected by the unveiling of a new technology who are compelled to receive as bad news what is essentially good news.

Publications

  • H. T. Demissie,  2021, ‘Current Status and Trajectory of Design Engineering in Kenya’ in Nnamdi Nwulu and Mammo Muchie (eds),  Engineering Design and Mathematical Modelling Concepts and Applications, Routledge
  • H. T. Demissie, 2020, ‘Regulatory, societal, developmental and sustainability issues of nanotechnology: An overview’ in UN Economic Commission for Africa, ‘Towards an African nanotechnology future: Trends, impacts and opportunities’, UN Economic Commission for Africa, Addis Ababa
  • H. T. Demissie, 2018, ‘Current Status and Trajectory of Design Engineering in Kenya’, African Journal of Science, Technology, Innovation and Development
  • H. T. Demissie, 2018, ‘Envisioning and Engaging the Societal Implications of Nanotechnology: Is It Too Early for Africa to Do Nanoethics?’, in Mazibuko, Zamanzima (ed), Beyond Imagination: The Ethics and Applications of Nanotechnology and Bio-Economics in South Africa, Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA), Johannesburg, South Africa
  • H.T. Demissie (lead editor and contributor), 2017, ‘Harnessing Nanotechnology for Sustainable Development in Africa, ACTS Press, University of Gondar and the Ethiopian Ministry of Science and Technology. See the review.(Launched in London on 24 January 2018 in an event hosted by King’s College London, London) 

Chapters contributed

  • H. T. Demissie, C. Ochieng, and D. Mengesha, ‘Nanotechnology and the Sustainability Challenge under the SDGs’
  • G. Foladori and H. T. Demissie, ‘African Nanotechnology in Context: Challenges and Potentialities’
  • H. T. Demissie et al, ‘Africa’s Prominent Role in the Development of the Global Risk Governance of Nanotechnology’
  • H. T. Demissie and Mammo Muchie, ‘South African Nanotechnology Research as the Core of the Research Networks Leveraging African Nanotechnology Development’
  • H. T. Demissie, C. Ochieng and G. Foladori, ‘Seizing Africa’s Technological Moment Atom by Atom’
  • H.T. Demissie (guest editor), 2016, ‘3D Printing Africa’s Development’, Special Issue of The African Technopolitan (May 2016).
  • Cosmas Ochieng and H. T. Demissie, 2016, ‘Political Will: The Take-Home for Africa From Obama’s Endorsement of 3D Printing’, The African Technopolitan
(May, 2016)
  • Berhanu Abegaz and H. T. Demissie, 2016, ‘3D Printing and the Policy Implications:
Some Thoughts for the Policy Implications on IP’, The African Technopolitan
(May 2016)
  • H. T. Demissie, 2015, ‘Africa Should Turn to 3D Printing Tech’ (published on the SciDev. Net Website,
  • H. T. Demissie and Mammo Muchie, 2016, ‘The Nano-Revolution and Economic Development: Is Africa Ready?’  in Amare Desta et al, Putting Knowledge to Work: From Knowledge Transfer to Knowledge Exchange, Africa World Press, Inc., New Jersey
  • H. T. Demissie and Mammo Muchie, 2014, ‘Re-inventing the GM Debate: The Ethiopian Biosafety Law and its Implications for Innovation and Knowledge Production on Emerging Technologies’, Science Technology Society, 2014 19: 109
  • H. T. Demissie and Mammo Muchie, 2013, ‘The social science of nanotechnology and sustainability: making sense of techno-optimism’, 2013, World Social Science Report, 2013, Changing Global Environments, UNESCO Publishing and ISSC (International Social Science Council)
  • H. T. Demissie, (co-editor), 2014, Unite or Perish: Africa Fifty Years after the Founding of the OAU, Africa Institute of South Africa (AISA), ISBN: 978-0-7983-0483-2
  • H. T. Demissie and Mammo Muchie, 2014, ‘Re-Anchoring Ethiopianism to Galvanise Transnational Movements for African Renaissance and Unity’, in Abdulkadir Osman Farah (ed), Transnational NGOs: Creative Connections of Development and Global Governance, Aalborg University Press, Aalborg, Denmark
  • H. T. Demissie and Mammo Muchie, 2013, ‘Africa and the impending nano-divide: an overview on temporal and normative perspectives’ in Muchie, M. et al (eds), The African Union Ten Years Afetr: Solving African Problems with Pan-Africanism and the African Renaissance,  Africa Institute of South Africa(AISA)
  • H. T. Demissie, 2011, ‘Justice or Beneficence: What Regulatory Virtue for Nano-Governance’, 2:3 European Journal of Law and Technology (EJLT) (December 2011)
  • H. T. Demissie, 2010, ‘Is Beneficent Regulation the New Better Regulation? Nano-regulation in the Wake of the New Better Regulation Movement’, 2:1 Law, Technology and Innovation (July 2010)
  • H. T. Demissie, 2008, ‘Taming Matter for the Welfare of Humanity: Regulating Nanotechnology’, in Roger Brownsword and Karen Yeung (eds), Regulating Technologies: Legal Futures, Regulatory Frames, and Technological Fixes, Hart Publishing, Oxford and Portland, Oregon
  • H. T. Demissie, ‘Mourning the Death of Privacy: The Law and Ethics of Privacy after Surveillance Technologies’, BioCentre Newsletter.
  • H. T. Demissie, 2005, ‘The Judicial Management of a State of Emergency’, 10:1 Coventry Law Journal, 2005, Coventry, UK