Bristol Law School: Distinguished Lecture Series - Professor David Nelken

The Law School is delighted to welcome Professor David Nelken FBA to kick off our Distinguished Lecture Series 2025-26.

Professor Nelken's lecture is titled 'Platform Governance, Wikipedia and Misinformation' and will be of interest to academics, students, and staff across the University and beyond. The lecture is based upon an article that Professor Nelken has been commissioned to write for the Annual Review of Law and Social Sciences (2026). The lecture will be followed by questions and chaired by Dr Katie Cruz (Bristol Law School).

David is Professor of Comparative and Transnational Law, King's College London. Prior to this, Professor Nelken taught law at Cambridge, Edinburgh, and University College, London, from 1976-1989 before moving to Italy in 1990 as Distinguished Professor of Legal Institutions and Social Change at the University of Macerata.
From 1995 to 2013, he was also Distinguished Research Professor of Law at Cardiff University, and from 2010 to 2014 Visiting Professor of Criminology at Oxford University.


He is a Fellow of the British Academy (Law section) and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. On the editorial board of numerous journals, he is also a member of the Independent Board of the SCOPUS (Elsevier) Database of peer-reviewed literature, where he is responsible for evaluating all law journals worldwide. He was a Panel member of Scottish Children's Hearings juvenile justice system 1979-1983, of Italian Regional Crime committees in the 1990's and, amongst many visiting appointments, was the Global Law professor at Tilburg University, the Netherlands, for 2014. He was appointed to the REF Law Committee for 2021.