Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium

Law Science Technology & Society (LSTS)

The Interdisciplinary Research Group on Law Science Technology & Society (LSTS, founded in November 2003) is devoted to analytical, theoretical and prospective research into the relationships between law, science, technology and society. LSTS focuses upon the integration of the legal perspective in current Science Technology and Society (STS)-research. The starting point is that notions or principles such as legal mediation between rights and interests, democratic participation, rule of law, transparency, accountability, public interest, human rights and individual freedom should form part of the constraints of scientific work. Crucial for LSTS is the challenge of conceiving scientific practices in such a way that they respond to the demands of the democratic constitutional state.

Besides scholars in law, legal theory and legal philosophy, LSTS also comprises researchers of the Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science -  CLWF covering disciplines such as philosophy, philosophy of science, mathematics and logic. Moreover, the LSTS is strongly intertwined with the international Interuniversity Attraction Poles (IAP) Phase V.16 research project The loyalties of knowledge. The positions and responsibilities of the sciences and of scientists in a democratic constitutional state (financed by the Federal Science Policy Belgium) of which Prof. Gutwirth is the coordinating promoter. One of the transversal themes of the project is ‘correlated humans’ (referring to the advance of identification and profiling technologies). Mireille Hildebrandt works on the topic of ‘correlated humans and the legal subject’. More information about this project can be found on  www.imbroglio.be.

LSTS senior members teach in different disciplines and different universities both at graduate and post-graduate level (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, Leiden University, Facultés Universitaires Saint-Louis, Université Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve, Katholieke Universiteit Brussel, etc.).

For further information visit our homepage at www.vub.ac.be/LSTS.