The 2022 Yearbook of the Digital Governance Research Group

This annual edited volume presents an overview of cutting-edge research areas within digital ethics as defined by the Digital Governance Research Group of the University of Oxford. It identifies new challenges and opportunities of influence in setting the research agenda in the field.

The 2022 edition of the Yearbook presents research on the following topics: autonomous weapons, cyber weapons, digital sovereignty, smart cities, artificial intelligence for the Sustainable Development Goals, vaccine passports, and sociotechnical pragmatism as an approach to technology. This text appeals to students, researchers, and professionals in the field.

Francesca Mazzi is a postdoctoral research fellow in AI and Sustainable Development at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, and a research associate of the Digital Governance Research Group of the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford.

Her research interests concern the intersections between technology and law, in relation to challenges and opportunities arising in the Fourth Industrial Revolution era. She is part of the Oxford Initiative on AI×SDGs, aimed at investigating how artificial intelligence (AI) has been and can in the future be used to support and advance the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). She is the co-editor of a forthcoming volume on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence for the Sustainable Development Goals.

From 2017 to 2020 she was a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Early Stage Researcher within the EIPIN- Innovation Society in a double doctorate program between Queen Mary University of London and Maastricht University. The Ph.D. research project concerned the patentability of AI generated inventions, with a case study on the pharmaceutical industry.