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, host Mauricio Figueroa chats with two world-leading voices in the field, a lawyer and a philosopher, Dr 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.
Dr 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).
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).
Mauricio Figueroa is a research scholar that teaches and writes on Law and Digital Technologies, and has international experience in legal research, teaching, and public policy. He is the host of the SCL podcast “Privacy and Technology Laws Around the World”.
About the podcast
Join host Mauricio Figueroa and guests on a tour of tech law from across the globe. Previous episodes have focused on the use of ‘robot judges’ in several jurisdictions, AI and environmental justice, and developments in India, the USA, Japan, Latin America, and Australia & New Zealand,
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