Call for expressions of interest: Rights & AI Network
SRI Research Lead Anna Su is convening a working group to examine how human rights frameworks are being impacted by AI systems. Expressions of interest are now open, with a deadline of September 17, 2026. (Photo credit: Ryoji Iwata/Unsplash.)
As artificial intelligence (AI) systems increasingly mediate decisions once reserved for human judgment such as courts, borders, workplaces, and across various areas of public administration—longstanding human rights principles, doctrines, and institutions face new and unresolved tests. Doctrines and concepts developed for a world of human decision-makers may not map cleanly onto systems that predict, classify, and act at scale. And while human rights are frequently invoked in response, it is rarely operationalized. For example, it remains unclear to what extent respecting rights means embedding constraints into system design itself, or reforming the institutions that have traditionally given rights their force.
To address this challenge, the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society (SRI) at the University of Toronto is launching a call for expressions of interest to join the Rights & AI Network (RAIN), a multidisciplinary working group bringing together scholars and practitioners in law, political theory, history, science and technology studies, and other cognate fields.
RAIN will convene scholars, practitioners and doctoral and postdoctoral researchers around a set of key questions: as AI systems reshape the exercise of power and the conditions of human life, how must the theory and practice of human rights adapt, what new rights questions does this moment demand, and how can human rights principles be embedded in the design and governance of AI systems themselves?
The initiative will examine how the conceptual and doctrinal architecture of human rights, much of it consolidated during the twentieth century, holds up, breaks down or needs to be rebuilt under conditions of algorithmic mediation. Its scope extends beyond how AI systems may threaten established rights frameworks to how they may generate new claims, new constitutional forms, and new questions about who or what can hold rights at all. It will also explore how and to what extent human rights principles can be embedded in the design and governance of AI systems themselves, and the conceptual, technical, and practical limits of doing so.
Research streams
The working group will organize around four research streams:
Foundational rights concepts: Revisiting core human rights concepts—dignity, autonomy, non-discrimination, and due process—as they are challenged, reinterpreted, or reinvented by AI systems.
Digital constitutionalism: Examining emerging efforts by states, platforms, and international bodies to constitutionalize and institutionalize the governance of AI and digital infrastructure, including novel forms of private ordering.
Emerging rights claims: Investigating novel or contested rights claims arising from AI, including questions of AI personhood, algorithmic accountability, and collective or group rights in data-driven systems.
Material conditions of AI: Attending to the political economy underlying AI systems while revisiting labour rights, environmental rights, and the right to an adequate standard of living.
Outcomes and impact
RAIN aims to produce durable intellectual and institutional impact at a moment when the human rights framework is being tested in real time by the deployment of AI systems across public and private life. Among other things, it wants to encourage and highlight scholarship that can inform how human rights principles are operationalized across the AI lifecycle and integrated into AI governance.
Over the course of the initiative, participants will:
Develop a shared conceptual vocabulary for analyzing rights claims under AI conditions, bridging doctrinal, historical, empirical and theoretical approaches.
Explore opportunities for producing publications, including a co-authored or edited volume, working papers, and shorter public-facing pieces intended to inform scholarly, judicial and policy audiences.
Build a lasting cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional network of scholars and practitioners working at the intersection of AI and human rights, with potential for continued collaboration beyond the initial convening period.
Contribute to SRI’s broader mission of shaping how societies understand and govern advanced technologies.
About RAIN
Rights & AI Network (RAIN) is led by SRI Research Lead Anna Su, associate professor at the University of Toronto’s Henry N.R. Jackman Faculty of Law. Su’s work spans the law and history of international human rights and the governance of emerging technologies, with a current focus on digital constitutionalism and the human rights implications of AI.
Participants will help shape the research agenda, present works in progress, and develop publications and other public-facing outputs that bring these questions to broader academic, policy, and civil society audiences. At the end of the academic year, RAIN will convene for a half-day workshop organized around the four research streams.
Who we’re looking for
RAIN is primarily an academic working group, though we also welcome practitioners and participants from civil society or government whose work bears directly on these questions. The group is intended to be interdisciplinary: we welcome expressions of interest from those working in law, the social sciences, and adjacent fields, including but not limited to constitutional law, human rights law, political theory, legal history, science and technology studies, and philosophy. There are no geographic restrictions on participation.
We are especially interested in applicants with a strong commitment to cross-disciplinary engagement and to thinking rigorously about how legal and normative frameworks travel—or fail to travel—into new technological contexts.
What participation involves
RAIN will meet for online sessions held monthly from fall 2026 to winter 2027, followed by an in-person workshop at the University of Toronto in the summer of 2027, organized around the four research streams.
Participants are expected to:
Commit to attending at least four (4) of the six online meetings. We will accept only applicants who can make this commitment.
Present work in progress. Sessions are built around what participants are currently working on; there is no expectation to develop a new project for the group. The aim is that meeting other members may generate new collaborations that continue beyond the initial convening period.
How to express interest
We welcome expressions of interest from individuals working in areas including, but not limited to, constitutional law, human rights law, political theory, legal history, science and technology studies, philosophy and other cognate fields. We are especially interested in applicants with a strong commitment to cross-disciplinary engagement and to thinking rigorously about how legal and normative frameworks travel—or fail to travel—into new technological contexts.
To express interest in joining RAIN, please submit the following through our online application form:
A statement of interest (max. 500 words, PDF) outlining your disciplinary background, how your perspective or expertise relates to AI and human rights, and your interest in contributing to the collaborative research agenda.
An up-to-date curriculum vitae (CV).
Example publications (optional).
Deadline: September 17, 2026.
About the Schwartz Reisman Institute
The Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society supports and integrates world-class research across sectors and disciplines to deepen our understanding of advanced technologies, law, institutions, regulatory structures and social values. We foster interdisciplinary ideas, insights and understandings of how technology affects society and individuals, with a goal of rethinking technology's role in society, the contemporary needs of human communities and the systems that govern them.
Our mission is to deepen our knowledge of advanced technologies, societies and what it means to be human by actively integrating research across traditional boundaries and fostering human-centered solutions that make a difference—for everyone.
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