Jason Grant Allen Email & Phone Number

I am an Associate Professor of Law at SMU Yong Pung How School of Law and Director of the Centre for Digital Law, an interdisciplinary research centre focussed on the law and regulation of emerging digital technologies. I am also an Adjunct Associate Professor (an honorary appointment) at my alma mater, the University of Tasmania School of Law, a Research Affiliate at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance at the Cambridge Judge Business School, and an Urban Fellow at the SMU College of Integrative Studies Urban Institute. I graduated from law school into the GFC. Right after graduation I packed off to New York, cramming for the Bar Exam in 2008, and watched modern financial history unfold. I recall a conversation with a kind of "Boho" Kiwi investor who had just pulled his money out of mortgage-backed securities; I had no idea what this meant at the time. This led to postgraduate degree international economic law and to a lifelong fascination with our changing world.I like working where law meets emerging technologies. For a few years, I've been engaging with blockchain and DLT. I'm interested in money (whatever that is today!), in decision systems, in interfaces between the "real world" and "virtual" spaces of social and economic interaction--in a word, wherever law, in all its path-dependent glory, meets with technology-driven (but all-too-human) behaviours. For the past two years, that has meant a lot of GenAI, too!I like to reframe current legal problems, and often find myself taking a view orthogonal to the crowd. As an academic, I see it as my responsibility to (i) think deeply about the problems that others don't have time (or inclination) to think about and (ii) to keep an open line with practice in terms of both identifying problems and communicating results. This combination ("deep/slow thought at the coalface") represents my beliefs about the role of the university (and university academics) in the digital transformation and my commitment to performing that (difficult, sometimes contradictory) role as best I can. Broadly tech-optimist, I see it as my job to ask the critical questions and demand answers. My current role takes me into research management, as well as research per se. I love talking to, learning from, and working with, developers, entrepreneurs, regulators, and policy-makers. I love teaching and learning from my students. Let's talk about how we can engage, whether on a research collaboration, thought leadership or commercial advice, CPD/capacity building, or just to rub brains!

Listed skills include Legal Research, Teaching, Climate Change, Legal Advice, and 19 others.