In October 2022, Anna Montgomery started her doctorate that combines law and computer science.  Anna’s project will look at addressing the changing role and responsibilities of market leading technology companies operating within the smart speaker industry.

Anna Montgomery has joined the LINAS Doctoral Training Programme after completing both her undergraduate law degree, and more recently, the LLM in Law and Technology, at QUB.

Anna’s project will be supervised by QUB School of Law’s, Dr Ciarán O’Kelly, and Dr Sandra Scott-Hayward, from the School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering, and Computer Science. 

Anna’s project will seek to address the changing role and responsibilities of market leading technology companies operating within the smart speaker industry; specifically questioning what the corporate digital responsibility of such companies should be, due to their potentially sensing (via smart speaker devices) danger and abuse in the home. This research will involve assessment of the socio-legal, ethical, and technical considerations for the smart speaker industry.

Anna - ‘I am absolutely delighted to be pursuing my PhD at QUB, and for the opportunity to undertake this important area of research.  I am really looking forward to working on this project with my supervisors and seeing how it develops over the next three years!’  

Dr Ciarán O'Kelly – ‘I am delighted to supervise this very important and timely project. Anna’s PhD work is directed at perhaps the main interface between people’s uses of technology and the presence of corporate managed devices in our lives. Her investigation will draw out the stark implications these devices pose for how corporate actors know things and what they know; for the line from electronic sensing to social knowledge; and for the obligations commercial actors might have to respond to information gleaned ‘inadvertently’ from the devices they sell. In short, Anna will forge new frontiers in our understanding of how privacy is reconstructed by technological change.

We welcome PhD applications from prospective students. Further details on how to apply can be found at https://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/SchoolofLaw/study/postgraduate-research/