PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Sylvie Delacroix

Sylvie Delacroix is a legal scholar and AI ethicist whose work asks how data infrastructure and large language models shape human agency. After a Cambridge doctorate in philosophy of law and a 2004–2005 fellowship at Harvard's Radcliffe Institute, she became a reader at UCL and then a professor at the University of Birmingham. In 2019, she and Neil Lawrence set out the case for bottom-up data trusts, and the Data Trusts Initiative they co-chaired saw its first pilots launch in 2022. Her book Habitual Ethics? appeared in 2022, and in 2025 she was a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College. She is the inaugural Jeff Price Chair in Digital Law at King's College London, where she directs the Centre for Data Futures and works on how large language models communicate uncertainty.

Works
95
Citations
761
h-index
11
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. By 2004

    Cambridge doctorate and Kent

    She studies in Belgium at Saint-Louis University, Brussels and the Université de Louvain-la-Neuve, then completes a doctorate in philosophy of law at Trinity College, Cambridge, on a Knox scholarship. She becomes a lecturer at the University of Kent, and by 2004 she works in law there.

  2. 2004–2006

    Radcliffe fellowship and first book

    She is the Evelyn Green Davis Fellow at Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in 2004–2005, working on "Religious Absolutism and Secular Normativity". Hart Publishing brings out her book Legal Norms and Normativity: an Essay in Genealogy in 2006.

  3. By 2020

    From UCL to Birmingham

    She is a reader at UCL, where she founds the Centre for Ethics and Law and the Centre for Virtual Environments and the Professions, before her professorship at the University of Birmingham. By 2020, she is a professor at Birmingham. Her policy work includes the Law Society of England and Wales's Public Policy Commission on the use of algorithms in the criminal justice system.

  4. 2019–2022

    Bottom-up data trusts

    In 2019, she and Neil Lawrence publish "Bottom-Up Data Trusts: Disturbing the 'One Size Fits All' Approach to Data Governance", which proposes data trusts as bottom-up structures that give data subjects a voice. In October 2020, Cambridge's Department of Computer Science and Technology launches the Data Trusts Initiative, co-chaired by Lawrence and Delacroix and supported by the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation. The first data trusts pilots worldwide launch in 2022.

  5. 2022

    The book Habitual Ethics?

    Bloomsbury publishes her book Habitual Ethics? in 2022. Her research examines the role played by habit within ethical agency.

  6. 2024

    Jeff Price Chair at King's

    In January 2024, King's College London announces her as the inaugural Jeff Price Chair in Digital Law at The Dickson Poon School of Law, and she starts the role in March 2024. She names participatory infrastructure for collective contestation around algorithmic systems as her priority.

  7. 2025

    Uncertainty paper and Dartmouth fellowship

    In September 2025, she and 14 co-authors, including Neil Lawrence, post "Beyond Quantification: Navigating Uncertainty in Professional AI Systems" on arXiv, proposing participatory processes through which professional communities shape how AI communicates uncertainty. She is a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College in spring 2025 and gives a talk there in April 2025 on moral attention, habit plasticity and LLMs.

  8. As of October 2026

    Directing the Centre for Data Futures

    She holds the Jeff Price Chair in Digital Law at King's College London and is the founding Director of its Centre for Data Futures, which builds participatory infrastructure across the entire AI lifecycle. She is also a visiting professor at the Centre for Language AI research at Tohoku University in Japan. Her current work develops agency-enhancing uncertainty communication features for LLMs deployed in morally loaded contexts.

Career

  1. Since 2025Tohoku UniversityVisiting professor
  2. Since 2024King's College LondonJeff Price Chair in Digital Law, Founding Director
  3. 2025Dartmouth CollegeMontgomery Fellow
  4. 2010–2020University College LondonReader, Founder
  5. Until 2004University of KentLecturer
  6. 2004–2005Harvard UniversityEvelyn Green Davis Fellow
  7. 2001–2024University of BirminghamProfessor
  8. 2001–2024Alan Turing Institute

Education

  1. Saint-Louis University, Brussels
  2. University of Louvain-la-Neuve
  3. Trinity College, University of CambridgeDoctorate in philosophy of law

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

  1. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes King's College London. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.
  2. Companies supply the most prior-work hires at 7 of the 9 frontier AI labsIncludes King's College London. Our estimates of the organizations where 550 people worked directly before joining 9 frontier AI labs across 620 career transitions, comparing the main feeder organizations per lab.
  3. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes King's College London. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  4. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes King's College London. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Sylvie Delacroix yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Sylvie Delacroix - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  2. The Radcliffe Institute names 2004-5 fellows — Harvard Gazette news.harvard.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  3. Professor Sylvie Delacroix appointed as inaugural Jeff Price Chair in Digital Law | King's College London kcl.ac.uk. Checked 20 October 2026.
  4. New Data Trusts Initiative will spearhead community-focused data governance | Department of Computer Science and Technology cst.cam.ac.uk. Checked 20 October 2026.
  5. Bottom-Up Data Trusts: Disturbing the ‘One Size Fits All’ Approach to Data Governance – Platform Cooperativism Resource Library resources.platform.coop. Checked 20 October 2026.
  6. Beyond Quantification: Navigating Uncertainty in Professional AI Systems arxiv.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  7. Sylvie Delacroix | The Montgomery Fellows Program montgomery.dartmouth.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  8. Sylvie Delacroix: The Architecture of Moral Attention: LLMS, Habit Plasticity & Moral Transformations | The Montgomery Fellows Program montgomery.dartmouth.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  9. Sylvie Delacroix - data empowerment, ethical agency delacroix.uk. Checked 20 October 2026.