Dr Joshua Hughes

Josh works on EU-funded research projects advising partners on ethical technology research, data protection, and data management. He analyses impacts, risks, and opportunities of emerging security technologies and develops solutions to improve technologies from the ethical, societal, and legal perspectives with a focus on privacy, data protection and human rights. With one eye on innovation, Josh endeavours to create solutions that are useful and valuable beyond research.

Josh leads Trilateral’s contributions to the ROXANNE and INSPECTr projects, oversees Trilateral’s work on the HEROES project, and has also contributed to the PREVISION project.

Josh has a research background in security, conflict, policing, forensic science, technology, international relations, and international law. At Trilateral, he has worked on integrated ethical, societal, and legal impact assessments, implementing Ethics-by-Design and Privacy-by-Design approaches to technologies and organisations, and leads the development of Trilateral’s human rights impact assessment and Human-Rights-by-Design approach.

His PhD thesis developed a novel approach to understanding human control over, and responsibility for, autonomous weapon systems. He has published on regulation of emerging technologies and use of deep learning in the security and defence domains. Josh also holds an LLM in International Law and International Relations, and a BSc (Hons) in Forensic Science and Criminal Investigation. Further, Josh is a IAPP Certified Information Privacy Professional – Europe.