Bio
Richard Mackenzie-Gray Scott works across the areas of human rights, digital technologies, constitutional studies and international law and relations, comprising research, teaching, policy engagement and legal practice. He guest lectures for the Policy Lab on AI and Bias at the University of Pennsylvania, works with the Centre for International Governance Innovation to provide policy guidance and research on matters of digital governance, and is a strategic advisor for Research Integrity Chain, a new tech start‑up providing software that utilizes blockchain to protect intellectual property and authenticate data provenance for the purposes of distinguishing between human- and computer-generated content.
His research has been published in leading peer-reviewed journals, reported on in the press — including newspapers such as The Herald and The Times — and has been referred to by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence and the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee of the UK Parliament. He has also written for Prospect Magazine, Tech Policy Press and Verfassungsblog, among other outlets.
He has provided evidence to the Scottish government, UK government and UK Parliament, and has worked on cases before the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, the London Court of International Arbitration, the UK Supreme Court, and the Court of Appeal of England and Wales. He also served on the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute Task Force on Drones.
Richard completed a post-doctorate at the University of Oxford, where he was a fellow at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights and St Antony’s College, and funded by the British Academy, studying the challenges and opportunities presented by existing and emerging digital technologies to human rights and democratic governance. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Nottingham, a law degree from the University of Glasgow, and studied under a Grotius Fellowship and a Reuben Lipman Scholarship at the University of Michigan. He read economics and law during his undergraduate studies at the University of Stirling, where he was a student-athlete. He is the author of State Responsibility for Non-State Actors: Past, Present and Prospects for the Future (Bloomsbury, 2022, reissued in paperback 2024).