Dr Edina Harbinja’s research focuses on the legal, regulatory, and social implications of emerging digital technologies, with particular expertise in post-mortem privacy and digital legacy. Her foundational work, including her 2022 monograph Digital Death, Digital Assets, and Post-Mortem Privacy (Edinburgh University Press), translated to Romanian, is widely regarded as pioneering and interdisciplinary, bridging law, ethics, computer science, and the social sciences. Her research methodology is notable for combining doctrinal, theoretical, empirical, and policy-oriented approaches to address rapidly evolving challenges at the intersection of law and digital innovation.
Outputs
Her scholarly output includes peer-reviewed journal articles and chapters addressing technology regulation, data protection, AI ethics, digital property, and online safety. Noteworthy publications include ‘Governing Ghostbots’ (2023) in Computer Law and Security Review, which examines AI-driven chatbots of deceased individuals. This article initiates her in-depth exploration of the legal and ethical implications of digital immortality services, or ‘deathtech’, a topic she is expanding into a monograph and a larger research project. Her journal article investigating UK residents’ perceptions of digital remains and postmortem privacy through empirical research was honoured with the Taylor and Francis Best Paper Award at the 2024 BILETA Annual Conference.
Projects
Recent projects include co-leading an extensive Leverhulme Trust-funded study on privacy law and digital remains, involving empirical research with legal professionals and the public. She co-leads the European Law Institute project on drafting model EU rules for digital inheritance and succession, a high-impact initiative informing future legislative frameworks on digital assets after death.
From 2020 to 2023, Dr Harbinja served as Co-Investigator on the ESRC-IRC funded Cross-border UK-Ireland Data Protection Network (Cross-DPN), a multi-stakeholder network promoting dialogue on data protection post-Brexit. She was the Principal Investigator for the 2020 Modern Law Review seminar series, titled "Emerging Technologies, Personality Laws and the Dead" (held in 2021).
Academic service, engagement and impact
Edina serves as deputy editor of Computer Law and Security Review, a leading technology law journal. She is a member of the ESRC Peer Review College, supporting rigorous research funding decisions nationally. Edina also co-edits the Future Law book series with Edinburgh University Press.
She sits on the Executive Committee and leads the consultation response stream of the British and Irish Law, Education and Technology Association (BILETA). She actively advises the Open Rights Group and jas contributed annually as the UK analyst for Freedom House’s Freedom on the Net report. She is an honorary fellow at the Centre for Death and Society and a regular contributor to the Death Online Research Network, which investigates death and technology across social sciences and humanities. In 2025, she became a founding member of the Birmingham Law Society Law Tech Committee, further strengthening her engagement with legal technology innovation.
Dr Harbinja’s research has significantly influenced public policy and law reform internationally. She has provided expert testimony to multiple UK parliamentary committees on the Online Safety Bill, encryption, online harms, digital succession, and contributed to legislative consultations in the UK, US, and Australia.
Dr Harbinja frequently presents at international conferences and delivers keynote lectures globally. Her public engagement spans major media outlets including the BBC, Reuters, The Guardian, Nature Outlook, and The Conversation.
She supervises doctoral and postdoctoral researchers, fostering the next generation of scholars in technology law and regulation.