Como Lake School for PhD Students
8-12 February 2027
Villa del Grumello, Como, Italy

https://govai.lakecomoschool.org/

Application deadline: 15 November 2026

Artificial Intelligence increasingly shapes scientific practices, institutional decision-making, legal frameworks, social and political processes. Correspondingly, the question of how AI systems should be governed has become a central research challenge cutting across traditional disciplinary boundaries.

Research on AI governance is currently pursued from several perspectives, including ethics and epistemology of AI, philosophy of technology, sociology of technology, law and regulation, public policy, and formal and computational methods. Each of these fields provides important conceptual and methodological resources, but effective approaches to governing AI require sustained dialogue across them.

The Governing AI School brings together leading scholars and PhD students to investigate the conceptual, normative, institutional, legal, social, and technical dimensions of AI governance. Its central objective is to create a common interdisciplinary environment in which different approaches to AI governance can be presented, compared, and discussed.

Topics

The School welcomes contributions addressing, among others:

1. Philosophy

- Fairness, reparation, transparency, and explainability

2. AI, Society, and Culture

- AI, human rights, and justice

3. Law and Politics 

- Interdisciplinary approaches to AI governance

4. Formal and Technical Approaches

- Technical AI governance and governance-by-design

Invited Lecturers

The School will feature contributions by scholars working across the philosophical, social, anthropological, legal, and technical dimensions of AI governance.

Elena Esposito — University of Bielefeld & University of Bologna
Sociology, Algorithmic Prediction and Artificial Communication

Philip Hacker — European New School of Digital Studies (ENS) at European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder)
Law and Ethics of AI

Sabina Leonelli — Technical University of Munich
Philosophy of Science, Data and AI

Giuseppe Primiero — University of Milan
Logic, Formal Methods and Philosophy of Technology

Maria Sapignoli — University of Milan
Anthropology of AI

Judith Simon — Universität Hamburg
Ethics of Information Technologies

The School is designed around thematic sessions rather than a conventional sequence of lectures.

Each thematic session will open with an extended lecture by an invited lecturer introducing a major problem, theoretical perspective, or methodological approach to AI governance. The invited lecture will be followed by presentations from participating PhD students.

This format is intended to place early-career research in direct dialogue with invited speakers and to encourage discussion across disciplinary boundaries. Particular attention will be devoted to identifying connections between philosophical, sociological, anthropological, legal, political, and formal or computational approaches.

Time will be reserved after each group of presentations for extended discussion among lecturers and participants.

Who Should Apply?

Applications are invited from PhD students working on questions related to the governance of Artificial Intelligence. We particularly encourage applications from researchers in the following fields as well as from researchers whose work crosses disciplinary boundaries:

Philosophy · Sociology · Anthropology · Law · Political and Social Sciences · Computer Science · Logic and Formal Methods

The School is particularly suitable for researchers interested in developing a broader understanding of AI governance beyond the methodological boundaries of their own discipline and in discussing their research with scholars working from complementary perspectives.

Applications

Applicants can apply at https://govai.lakecomoschool.org/application/ by providing:

• a max 2-pages Curriculum Vitae;
• a 1-page motivation letter briefly explaining their research interests and reasons for attending the School;
• a 1-page abstract describing the contribution they would like to present.

The abstract should clearly state the research question, approach, and relevance of the proposed contribution to the general theme of governing AI. 

Applications will be evaluated by the Organizing Committee on the basis of scientific quality, relevance to the themes of the School, and the aim of creating a diverse and genuinely interdisciplinary group of participants.

Application deadline: 15 November 2026

Registration fees: 300EUR

Organizing Committee

Judith Simon
Ethics in Information Technologies
University of Hamburg

Giuseppe Primiero
University of Milan
PhilTech Research Center for the Philosophy of Technology
Logic, Uncertainty, Computation and Information Lab

Contact
philtech@unimi.it