Introducing new PhD candidate: Alessia Di Muro

Alessia Di Muro has recently joined the Faculty of Law as a Ph.D. candidate within the project “Artificial Intelligence in Education: Layers of Trust (EduTrust AI)”, where she will investigate the use of artificial intelligence in education from a data protection perspective.

Alessia holds a Master's degree in European law from the University of Turin, Italy. Her master’s thesis, titled "Artificial Intelligence and Equality: The Need for Gender-Responsive Data", explored the relationship between AI and equality, with a specific focus on the impact of the gender data gap on algorithmic discrimination, and assessed the effectiveness of the EU legal framework in addressing such a phenomenon.

In her Ph.D. research, Alessia will look into the legal challenges and implications of the use of AI in education, particularly with regard to learning analytics. Her work aims to address issues related to data protection and privacy, investigating the legal framework that governs the processing of personal data in the development and application of learning analytics tools. Alessia will analyse the GDPR, the AI Act and national education laws, exploring issues such as the appropriate legal basis for data processing, the delineation of responsibilities among stakeholders, the principle of transparency and the right to be informed. Her work is based on the belief that while AI-driven learning tools hold huge potential to improve educational outcomes, they also raise significant privacy concerns that must be addressed to build trust and ensure the responsible use of these technologies.