Urs Gasser

Executive Director, Berkman Center for Internet & Society

Urs Gasser is the Executive Director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. He teaches at Harvard Law School, at the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland) and Fudan University School of Management (China). He is a visiting professor at KEIO University (Japan) and a Fellow at the Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral Research. Urs Gasser serves as a trustee on the board of the NEXA Center for Internet & Society at the University of Torino and on the board of the Research Center for Information Law at the University of St. Gallen, and is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society in Berlin.

Dr. Gasser has written and edited several books, and published over 100 articles in professional journals. He is the co-author of “Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives” (Basic Books, 2008, with John Palfrey) that has been translated into 10 languages (including Chinese), and co-author of “Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly Interconnected Systems” (Basic Books, 2012, with John Palfrey).

Urs Gasser’s research and teaching activities focus on information law, policy, and society issues. Current projects – several of them in collaboration with leading research institutions in the U.S., Europe, and Asia – explore policy and educational challenges for young Internet users, the regulation of digital technology (currently with focus on cloud computing), ICT interoperability, information quality, the law’s impact on innovation and risk in the ICT space, cybersecurity, and alternative governance systems. He graduated from the University of St. Gallen (lic.iur., Dr.iur.) as well as Harvard Law School (LL.M. ‘03) and received several academic awards and prizes for his research, including Harvard’s Landon H. Gammon Fellowship for academic excellence and the “Walther Hug-Preis Schweiz”, a prize for the best doctoral theses in law nationwide, among others.

Before returning to the Berkman Center as Executive Director in 2009, Urs Gasser was Associate Professor of Law at the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland), where he led the Research Center for Information Law as Faculty Director. Prior to his St. Gallen appointment, Urs spent three years as a resident fellow at the Berkman Center, where he was appointed Faculty Fellow in 2005. During his first stay at the Berkman Center from 2002-2005, he was the lead research fellow on the Digital Media Project, a multi-disciplinary research project aimed at exploring the transition from offline/analog to online/digital media. He also initiated and chaired the Harvard-Yale-Cyberscholar Working Group, and was a visiting researcher at Harvard Law School in the 2003/04 academic year.

Dr. Gasser frequently acts as a commentator on comparative law issues for the US and European media. He is also an advisor to international technology companies on information law matters.