Sophie Weerts

Sophie Weerts is an associate professor of public law at the Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration (IDHEAP) and co-chair of the Initiative Law and Society (IDES) at the University of Lausanne. Since 2019, her research agenda has concentrated on the digital transformation of the State and its effects on public law. Adopting an empirical approach, she examines how law regulates technology and how technologies also affect the content and scope of legal principles, democratic procedures, and individual rights. From an epistemological and methodological perspective, she adopts a deconstructivist approach of legal and policy instruments through document analysis, interviews and focus groups. She has mainly published on social media, open government data, the internet of things and artificial intelligence. Currently, her research is centred on regulatory sandboxes, a public policy tool aimed at fostering innovation, especially in the digital field. In this regard, she is presently leading a four-year research project titled ‘Regulating the algorithmic state with regulatory sandboxes’, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. In the context of this research, she intends to analyse how regulatory authorities implemented the experimental approach rooted in the sandbox culture, how such sandboxes impact the interpretation of the law, and how the experimental approach can contribute to the project of more flexible and agile regulation.

Sophie would be happy to speak on matters related to her research or methodological approach.