Dr. Eduard Fosch-Villaronga Ph.D. LL.M M.A. is Associate Professor and Director of Research at eLaw – Center for Law and Digital Technologies at Leiden University. Eduard investigates the legal and regulatory aspects of robot and AI technologies, a line of research supported by numerous prestigious grants, including the ERC Starting Grant, the NWO-VIDI Grant, the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action (MSCA), and the Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate (EMJD).

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Dr. Eduard Fosch-Villaronga Ph.D. LL.M M.A. is Associate Professor and Director of Research at eLaw–Center for Law and Digital Technologies at Leiden University. Eduard is an ERC Laureate who investigates the legal and regulatory aspects of robot and AI technologies, focusing on healthcare, governance, diversity, and privacy. Eduard Fosch-Villaronga is the Principal Investigator (PI) of his personal ERC Starting Grant SAFE & SOUND, where he works on science for robot policies (2023-2028), and of the NWO-VIDI Grant Sex, Care & Robots, where he is creating a future where sexual rights are realized for all (2026-2031). Eduard is also the group leader of eLaw's contribution to the Horizon Europe Horizon Europe AI:Liner: Data-driven sewer asset management: a path toward the resilient transformation of Europe's sewer infrastructure (2025-2028).

In 2023, Eduard received the EU Safety Product Gold Award for his contribution to making robots safer by including diversity considerations and joined in 2024 the Royal Netherlands Standardization Institute (NEN) as an expert and the International Standard Organization (ISO) as a committee member in the ISO/TC 299/WG 2 laying down Safety Requirements for Service Robots (ISO/CD 13482).

Eduard Fosch-Villaronga was assistant professor at eLaw during 2021-2022. During this time, Eduard was the Principal Investigator of PROPELLING (2021-2022), an FSTP from the H2020 Eurobench project, a project using robot testing zones to support evidence-based robot policies. He is also the co-leader of the Gendering Algorithms project, an interdisciplinary pilot project exploring the functioning, effects, and governance policies of AI-based gender classification systems. In 2021, he was the PI of LIAISON, an FSTP from the H2020 COVR project that aims to link robot development and policymaking to reduce the complexity of robot legal compliance. Eduard was also the co-leader of the Ethical, Legal, and Societal Aspects Working Group at the H2020 Cost Action 16116 on Wearable Robots and currently participates actively in the Social Responsibility Working Group at the H2020 Cost Action 19121 GoodBrother. In 2020 and 2022, Eduard served the European Commission in the Sub-Group on Artificial Intelligence (AI), connected products, and other new challenges in product safety to the Consumer Safety Network (CSN) to revise the General Product Safety Directive.

Eduard co-edited the book Law and Artificial Intelligence together with Prof. Bart Custers, co-wrote the book AI for Healthcare Robotics with Hadassah Drukarch and published it with CRC Press; and wrote the book Robots, Healthcare, and the Law. Regulating Automation in Personal Care with Routledge and is interested in human-robot interaction, responsible innovation, and the future of law.

Previously, he was the recipient of a personal Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Researcher under the COFUND LEaDing Fellows at the eLaw Center for Law and Digital Technologies at Leiden University (NL) (Jan 2019-Dec 2020). He also was a postdoc at the Microsoft Cloud Computing Research Center at Queen Mary University of London (the UK, 2018) investigating the legal implications of cloud robotics and at the University of Twente (NL, 2017) as a postdoc, exploring iterative regulatory modes for robot governance. Eduard Fosch-Villaronga holds an Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate (EMJD) in Law, Science, and Technology coordinated by the University of Bologna (IT, 2017), an LL.M. from the University of Toulouse (FR, 2012), an MA from the Autonomous University of Madrid (ES), and an LL.B. from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (CAT, 2011). Eduard is also a qualified lawyer in Spain, fluent in Catalan, Spanish, English, Italian, and French, and his publications are available online. 

Publications