I am professor of Law and Society in the Digital World at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies (CSLS). Prior to taking up this post in 2025, I was in South Africa where I was Research Professor in the Humanities at the University of Johannesburg, along with serving has head of the Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy at the CSLS since 2009.
Research
My research bridges socio-legal studies, digital technologies/AI, and international development. Most of my research takes place in Eastern and Southern Africa. Much of my early work on the digital world focused on the role of the state and law in fragile contexts. For example, I wrote about how the experience of decades fighting in the bush shaped the ways some of Africa’s liberation movements and guerrilla insurgencies approached media policy after coming to power, as explored in the book, Media, Conflict, and the State in Africa drawing on extensive field work in Ethiopia and Uganda. I also considered the role of media in post-conflict constitution-making and transitional justice processes, and I have researched how and why governments decide to shut down the internet in response to concerns about online hate speech or mis/disinformation.
Overtime, my research on law and technology has moved to focus on law beyond the state. This approach emerged out of my research in the Somali territories where I have been exploring, how Somalia, a country that is often described as ‘lawless’ or a ‘failed state’, has given rise to one of the world’s most ambitious systems of mobile money and some of the fastest (and cheapest) internet on the continent. My emphasis is on what works, and why, by focusing the range of public authorities (both state and non-state) active in creating this enabling environment. Related to this approach, I am currently working on a project looking at how Ethiopia, Somali and Nigerian migrants in Johannesburg access justice and security beyond the South African state, and the role of technology in connecting diaspora communities with customary law mechanisms back ‘home’.
My research has also focused on AI for Social Good, and the role of Big Tech in Africa, with a focus on inequalities and emerging modes of resistance.
I currently hold, or have recently led, several large grants including the European Research Council (ERC) project ConflictNet (The politics and practice of social media in conflict in Africa). I am the Oxford PI of the EU Horizon project Resilient Media for Democracy in the Digital Age (Remed), have been a Co-I of the ESRC Centre for Public Authorities and International Development at the London School of Economics’ Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa, and collaborated with international organizations such as the United Nations and African Union.
Teaching
I supervise DPhil and MPhil students in Socio-Legal Studies, many of whom conduct extensive field research in Africa and Asia and I teach on the theory and methods courses at CSLS. I also have an interest in outreach and I currently lead the Oxford Media Policy Summer Institute- an annual programme that has been running for more than two decades and brings together a dynamic group of participants from government, the tech sector, academia, and civil society for discussions around technology and policy. I also recently launched, with colleagues, a new executive education programme, InfoLead, which is a short course for judges and policy makers on how to address challenging problems of mis/disinformation and online hate speech.
Publications
Examples of publications include:
Technology and Governance Beyond the State: the rule of non-law, co-edited with C. Casabo-Voyvodic, Routledge, 2025.
Media, Conflict and the State in Africa, Cambridge University Press, 2018.
World Trends in Media Development and Freedom of Expression, with I. Gagliardone and M. Price, UNESCO, 2018.
Speech and Society in Turbulent Times: Freedom of Expression in Comparative Perspective, co-edited with M. Price, Cambridge University Press, 2018.
“Internet Shutdowns, Sovereignty, and the Postcolonial State in Africa,” Global Policy, 2025, 16: 372-379.
“AI for Social Good and the Corporate Capture of Global Development,” with G. Iazzolino, Information Technology for Development, 626-643, 2024.
“Inequalities and Content Moderation,” with G. De Gregorio, Global Policy, 14(5): 870-9, 2023.
“A Tale of Two Publics? Online Politics in Ethiopia’s Elections,” with I. Gagliardone and G. Aynekulu, Journal of Eastern African Affairs 13(1): 192-213, 2019.
“Developing Bottom-up Indicators for Human Rights,” The International Journal of Human Rights, 23(8):1378-1394, 2019.
“Governance Without Government in the Somali Territories,” Journal of International Affairs, 71(2): 73-89, 2018.
Further information can be found on my departmental page: https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/people/nicole-stremlau
