Cyberlaw expert Jonathan Zittrain elected to University's first Chair of Internet Governance and Regulation

16 March 2005

Internationally-known cyberlaw scholar Jonathan Zittrain will become the first holder of the Chair in Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford University’s Oxford Internet Institute (OII) this autumn.

With his appointment, the OII will play an increasingly significant role in stimulating and informing debate over Internet governance at a time when the future of the Internet and PC is at a potential point of transformation.

Professor Bill Dutton, Director of the OII, said that Professor Zittrain’s arrival signals the OII’s intention to integrate worldwide thinking across the social sciences, law, and technology. ‘Professor Zittrain does not simply study the Internet from afar. He also builds on it,’ said Dutton. ‘Such active research is an important part of the OII’s mission.’

Professor Zittrain (BS Yale, MPA, JD Harvard) joins the OII from his post as the Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman Assistant Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School, where he co-founded the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. He will coordinate a significant research and teaching relationship between the two centres, and become the Berkman Visiting Professor at Harvard. His recent research includes the study of Internet filtering by national governments, the role of intermediaries as points of control in Internet architecture, and the taxation of Internet commerce. He is the founder of the H2O Project, which produces simple, unobtrusive but novel tools for use in classrooms, and is co-founder of the Chilling Effects web site, where Google and others report requests that information be censored.

Zittrain has also been named a Professorial Fellow of Oxford’s Keble College, which has developed particular interest in computer science and public policy.

Contact: Jonathan Zittrain through the OII at +44 (0)1865 287 210 or enquiries@oii.ox.ac.uk, http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/zittrain, Bill Dutton, Director of the OII at +44 (0)1865 287 210 or director@oii.ox.ac.uk, or Professor Averil Cameron, Warden of Keble College on +44 (0) 1865 272727

Notes to Editors

• The Oxford Internet Institute (OII), a department of Oxford University, is one of the world's first truly multi-disciplinary Internet institutes based in a major university. Devoted to the study of the societal implications of the Internet, the OII seeks to shape research, policy and practice in the UK, Europe and around the world. See www.oii.ox.ac.uk
• Keble College was founded by public subscription in 1870 and named after John Keble. It is one of the largest colleges in Oxford and has well over 650 students, of whom nearly 225 are graduate students. See www.keble.ox.ac.uk
• Relevant links:
  Berkman Centre: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu
  H2O: http://h2o.law.harvard.edu
  Chilling Effects: http://www.chillingeffects.org
  Internet Filtering: http://www.opennetinitiative.net
  Jonathan Zittrain: http://www.jz.org