Technology & Privacy Laws Around The World - Episode 8: Digital death and postmortem privacy

We live our lives online and, increasingly, we die there too. Our data, social media, and the relationships we build in virtual spaces often outlive us, sometimes reshaping how others experience loss. For this episode, Mauricio Figueroa chats with two world-leading voices in the field, a lawyer and a philosopher, Edina Harbinja (University of Birmingham) and Patrick Stokes (Deakin University), to explore what happens to our digital selves after death, and how questions of privacy, legacy, and identity persist beyond the grave.Patrick Stokes is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. He is currently a Chief Investigator on the project “Digital Death and Immortality” (2024-26) funded by the Australian Research Council. His most recent book is "Digital Souls: A Philosophy of Online Death" (Bloomsbury, 2021). Edina Harbinja is an Associate Professor in Law at University of Birmingham, specialising in digital rights, post-mortem privacy, digital remains, and the regulation of emerging technologies. Her work drives international legal and policy innovation in digital legacy and technology governance. She's the author of "Digital death, digital assets and post-mortem privacy: Theory, Technology and the Law" (Edinburgh University Press, 2022). She serves on the Advisory Council of the Open Rights Group, a leading digital rights advocacy organisation, and on the Executive Committee of the British and Irish Law, Education and Technology Association (BILETA).Mauricio Figueroa is a legal scholar that teaches and writes on Law and Digital Technologies. He is the host of the SCL podcast "Privacy and Technology Laws Around the World".