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Dr Beatriz Kira
Biography
I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Law & Regulation, working with the Online Speech Project (OSP) – a new multi-disciplinary initiative on the governance of online content moderation, led by Dr Jeffrey Howard and funded by UK Research & Innovation (UKRI).
I am a lawyer and a social scientist by training, holding a PhD in Economic Law and Political Economy from the University of Sao Paulo, and an MSc in Social Sciences of the Internet from the University of Oxford.
I joined UCL’s Department of Political Science as a Research Fellow in September 2022. Before that, I was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, where I also taught Law & Public Policy to MPP students.
I also have experience with policymaking, having acted as an expert consultant for the Brazilian competition authority (CADE) and as a research assistant for the Brazilian Institute of Applied Economic Research (IPEA).
Research
My academic work focuses on the governance of digital technologies, and the regulatory and policy frameworks to supervise the economic power of technology companies, including competition law, trade law, and data protection regulation. As part of the Online Speech Project, I will be conducting research on the regulation of content moderation by social-media platforms.
I have published in various interdisciplinary and legal journals, including Industrial and Corporate Change, Global Policy, Nature Human Behaviour, and The Theory and Practice of Legislation.
Selected Publications
- Journal articles
- Kira, B. (Forthcoming) ‘Is iFood Starving the Market? Antitrust Enforcement in the Market for Online Food Delivery in Brazil’, World Competition Law and Economics Review, 46(2).
- Brolio Gonçalves, P., Coutinho, D. R. and Kira, B. (2022) ‘Virus and Screens: The Economic Law of Digital Platforms in the COVID-19 Pandemic’ (in Portuguese), Revista Direito e Praxis, 13(1).
- Kira, B., Sinha, V. and Srinivasan, S. (2021) ‘Regulating Digital Ecosystems: Bridging the Gap between Competition Policy and Data Protection’, Industrial and Corporate Change, 30(5), pp. 1337–1360.
- Hale, T., Angrist, N., Hale, A. J., Kira, B., Majumdar, S., Petherick, A., Phillips, T., Thompson, R. N., Webster, S. and Zhang, Y. (2021) ‘Government Responses and COVID-19 Deaths: Global Evidence across Multiple Pandemic Waves’, PLOS ONE, 16(7).
- Kira, B. and Coutinho, D. R. (2021) ‘Adjusting the Lens: New Theories of Harm for Digital Platforms’, Revista de Defesa da Concorrência, 9(1).
- Hale, T., Angrist, N., Goldszmidt, R., Kira, B., Cameron-Blake, E., Hallas, L., Majumdar, S., Petherick, A., Phillips, R. and Webster, S. (2021) ‘A Global Panel Database of Pandemic Policies (Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker)’, Nature Human Behaviour, 5, pp. 529–538.
- Antonialli, D. and Kira, B. (2020) ‘The Future of Urban Planning is in Data from the Present: The Protection of Privacy in the Context of Smart Cities’, Revista Brasileira de Estudos Urbanos e Regionais, 22(1).
- Machado, C., Kira, B., Narayanan, V., Kollanyi, B. and Howard, P. N. (2019) ‘A Study of Misinformation in WhatsApp Groups with a Focus on the Brazilian Presidential Elections’, WWW ’19: Companion Proceedings of the 2019 World Wide Web Conference, pp. 1013–1019.
- Zanatta, R. and Kira, B. (2018) ‘Regulation of Uber in Sao Paulo: From Conflict to Regulatory Experimentation’, International Journal of Private Law, 8(4), pp. 83–94.
- Coutinho, D. R., Kira, B., Rolemberg Lessa, M. and Almeida de Castro, H. (2017) ‘Participatory Democracy and Law-making in Contemporary Brazil’, The Theory and Practice of Legislation, 5(3), pp. 225–243.
- Book chapters
- Kira, B. (Forthcoming) ‘Platform Design and Recommendation Systems: Implications for Competition, Data Privacy, and Platform Governance’, in M. Ioannidou and D. Mantzari (eds.) Research Handbook on Competition Law and Data Privacy. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.
- Coutinho, D. R. and Kira, B. (2021) ‘Competition Policy and Personal Data Protection in Brazil: New Challenges and Continuing Concerns’, in UNCTAD Research Partnership Platform (ed.) Competition and Consumer Protection Policies for Inclusive Development in the Digital Age. Brussels: UNCTAD.
- Other articles
- Kira, B. (2020) ‘Governing a Globalised Digital Economy: How to Make Technology Policy and Regulation Work for Developing Countries’, Global Policy.