Who is Marco Almada?

PhD in Law

Institution: European University Institute (Florence, Italy)
Thesis title: "Delegating the Law of Artificial Intelligence: A Procedural Account of Technology-Neutral Regulation"
Supervisor: Deirdre Curtin

LLM in Comparative, European, and International Laws

Institution: European University Institute (Florence, Italy)
Thesis title: "A techno-legal approach to the life cycle of artificial intelligence systems"
Supervisor: Deirdre Curtin

LLB in Law

Institution: University of São Paulo (São Paulo, Brazil)
Thesis title: "Direito à revisão de decisões automatizadas" [The right to a review of automated decisions]
Supervisor: Juliano Maranhão

MSc in Electrical Engineering

Institution: University of Campinas (Campinas, Brazil)
Thesis title: "Simulação de fenômenos sociais: aspectos epistemológicos e metodológicos" [Simulation of social phenomena: epistemological and methodological aspects]
Supervisor: Romis Attux

BSc in Computer Science

Institution: University of Campinas (Campinas, Brazil)

Researcher, European University Institute (Florence, Italy)

Academic consultant, Maranhão & Menezes law firm (São Paulo, Brazil)

Researcher and executive coordinator, Lawgorithm (São Paulo, Brazil)

Intern, data protection law, Sampaio Ferraz Advogados (São Paulo, Brazil)

Data scientist, various companies (São Paulo, Brazil)

Teaching assistant, University of Campinas (São Paulo, Brazil)

In July 2021, I started a newsletter titled AI, Law, and Otter Things. As its name suggests, this newsletter gives me a venue to write informally about things that interest me. There is no fixed schedule, but I tend to post once every fortnight or so.

Most of my posts so far have dealt with the relationship between law and technology, my experience as a doctoral candidate, and the exploration of ideas that are not yet mature enough for publication in a formal space. I also share some recommendations that might be of interest to my readers: mainly academic readings, but from time to time some other books, TV shows, and games. And every issue has images of cute animals, which tend to be either otters or my dog, Winnie.

Please consider subscribing to my newsletter, and feel free to reply to it with any thoughts, comments, or pushback. Here are some posts I am particularly fond of:

• Dealing with technical concepts in legal scholarship (8 March 2024), in which I discuss the notion of a "representational model" from the philosophy of science and suggest how it can be useful for managing technical complexities in legal reasoning.

• Representing AI in law (21 December 2023), in which I argue that the notion of a "representational model" from the philosophy of science can be of some use for law and technology scholars.

• Two flavours of interdisciplinary work (28 September 2023), in which I argue that interdisciplinarity should open, rather than close, paths for inquiry.

• Metaphors and analogies in law & tech (1 June 2023), on what makes a metaphor a fruitful basis for legal reasoning in this domain.

• The legal bases for the AI Act (4 May 2023), on the institutional constraints that limit the EU's attempt to adopt a horizontal AI regulation .

• EU Law as a foreign language (26 October 2022), in which I write a bit about my curious position of researching EU law despite being trained in a non-EU jurisdiction.

• Thinking about bad doctrine (19 January 2022), in which I try to make sense of claims that "most doctrinal scholarship is rubbish" and argue that doctrine is valuable in spite (and to some extent, precisely because) of that.

• The Charms of the Past (1 September 2021), on the value of history of technology to law & technology.

Working languages

Portuguese (Brazilian), English

Other languages

Italian (CEFR B2), Spanish (CEFR B2), French (CEFR A2)