Mark Leiser

Dr M.R. (Mark) Leiser PhD is Assistant Professor at the Center for Law and Digital Technologies at Leiden University. He presently serves as thesis coordinator for the Advanced Masters Programme. He has a background in law, finance, and journalism. He holds a BSc in Communications and Media Studies, LLB (Hons) and PhD (Strathclyde), and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts (FRSA) and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA). He completed his BSc in Communications in the US before returning to Scotland and completing his LLB and then PhD at the University of Strathclyde.

Dr Leiser’s expertise is in the regulation of the Internet. His research areas include heuristics, platform regulation, algorithmic profiling, state surveillance and cybersecurity (computational propaganda). His research focuses on implementing insights from cognitive and social psychology as well as behavioural economics into regulation of the online environment. In application, his work applies to the regulation of #fakenews, machine speech, and digital deception. His work has been influential in the regulation of computational propaganda. His research objective is to restore trust to the infosphere by working with industry partners and government to mitigate the effects of deceptive content and state-sponsored algorithmic-processing and automated forms of propaganda spread via bots, botnets and scripts. He won the BILETA award for Best Paper in 2014 and again in 2017. His work on the role of non-state actors in Governance of the online environment (with Professor Andrew Murray) was published in The Oxford Handbook of the Law and Regulation of Technology (eds Roger Brownsword, Eloise Scotford & Karen Yeung).

Dr Leiser routinely presents to various industry partners and politicians on the ‘human element’ of cybersecurity and is a vocal critic of the implementation of data protection law in the EU.

Dr Leiser is a regular contributor to the British and International press on technological issues and has presented his work in numerous international conferences and seminars.