Paul Bernal is a Lecturer in Information Technology, Intellectual Property and Media Law.  His background is unusual for a legal academic – his first degree was in mathematics, at Cambridge University, 20 years ago, and he is a qualified Chartered Accountant. Over the last 20 years he has worked as an auditor, in finance for big companies in the City, done pioneering work in the early days of the internet, including setting up and running the first online real-time education system for children to operate in the UK, and been finance director of a charity dealing with mental health and criminal justice. That last work led him to an interest first in human rights (leading to a Masters in Human Rights at the LSE in 2006) and then to the law. He is in the final stages of his PhD, researching into internet privacy, and in particular into the commercial gathering and use of personal data – particularly by organisations like Google and Facebook – and how that use affects our lives, and will increasingly affect our lives in the future.

His teaching has included information technology law, intellectual property law and human rights law and practice, and his research interests include all aspects of IT law and human rights Law, and in particular how the two overlap and interact. Particularly current topics include privacy and data protection, social networking and online identity.