Nathalie A. Smuha is a legal scholar and philosopher, and an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, focusing on the intersection of law, philosophy and technology.
Her research spans European and international law and examines legal and ethical questions around artificial intelligence (AI) and other digital technologies. She is particularly interested in the impact of AI on human rights, democracy and the rule of law.
Nathalie is the author of Algorithmic Rule By Law: How Algorithmic Regulation in the Public Sector Erodes the Rule of Law (Cambridge University Press, 2025) and the editor of The Cambridge Handbook on the Law, Ethics and Policy of Artificial Intelligence (Cambridge University Press, 2025). Her work has been the recipient of several awards and is widely cited.
Previously, she was Assistant Professor and FWO Postdoctoral Fellow at the KU Leuven Faculty of Law, and the academic coordinator of the KU Leuven Summer School on the Law, Ethics, and Policy of AI. She has also taken up Adjunct Professorships at NYU School of Law and Columbia Law School, and she held visiting positions at the University of Oxford, the University of Chicago and the University of Birmingham.
Besides her academic activities, Nathalie frequently advises governments and international organizations on AI policy. Previously, she worked at the European Commission (DG Connect), where she provided legal and policy advice on the EU's AI strategy, and acted as the coordinator of the High-Level Expert Group on AI. She was also a scientific expert in the Council of Europe’s (Ad Hoc) Committee on AI, which drafted a new international treaty on AI, human rights, democracy and the rule of law. As a qualified member of the Brussels and the New York Bar, she also worked in private practice, focusing on competition law and digital regulation.
Nathalie Smuha holds a PhD in Law, a BA and MA in Law, and a BA and MA in Philosophy from KU Leuven. She also holds an LL.M. from the University of Chicago School of Law.
You can find her Faculty profile on the University of Toronto's website.