The University of Ghent has honoured Professor Joe Cannataci with the award of the Amnesty International Chair 2024 in recognition of his significant role in privacy protection.
The official award of the chair by the vice-rector of the University of Ghent, Prof. Mieke Van Herreweghe, took place earlier this week during a ceremony held at the historical De Vooruit Cultural Center in Ghent.
In her welcome on behalf of Ghent University, Prof. Eva Brems explained how this honour has, in previous years, been bestowed on a number of leading human rights advocates including Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi.
The introduction was followed by a laudatio by Professor Eva Lievens during which she outlined the reasons prompting the Selection Committee of the Human Rights Netwok at Ghent University to nominate Cannataci as this year’s laureate for the Amnesty International Chair.
She explained that as one of the top-ranked Universities in the world, Ghent University wished to acknowledge Cannataci’s outstanding contribution to global privacy rights, honouring his dedication and leadership in this vital field. Professor Lievens mentioned Cannataci’s pioneering work in the field of personality and privacy and his contribution as the first-ever UN Special Rapporteur on Privacy from 2015 to 2021.
Cannataci delivered a public lecture sharing his insights on the complexity of privacy as a universal right, tackling issues surrounding privacy, identity, and human rights, while reflecting on the significance of privacy in an increasingly digitized world.
Joe Cannataci is currently head of the Department of Information Policy & Governance and Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Media & Knowledge Sciences at the University of Malta as well as co-director of the Security, Technology & e-Privacy (STeP) Research Group at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. His extensive expertise in privacy law and policy also lies behind his various international affiliations including those as a Senior Fellow at the CNAM Security-Defense-Intelligence Department in Paris and the Centre for Health, Law and Emerging Technologies at the University of Oxford.