Jhalak M. Kakkar is Executive Director at the Centre for Communication Governance at National Law University Delhi as well as a Visiting Professor at the National Law University Delhi. She leads the academic and policy research at CCG across pressing information law and policy issues such as data governance and privacy, platform regulation, governance of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchain, and cybersecurity.
Jhalak works extensively on AI regulation and data governance, providing policy comments to the Indian government and international organisations like OHCHR and GPAI. Jhalak is an Expert member of the Global Partnership on AI (GPAI) Multistakeholder Experts Group Plenary and member of the Working Group on Data Governance. She is an Expert member of the United Nations Broadband Commission Working Group on AI Capacity Building. She is also an Expert on the Asian Dialogue on AI Governance (collaboration between Singapore Management University and Microsoft) and engages in discussions around principle and regulatory design around AI in countries like India, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, China and Australia. Jhalak has taught at various forums, summer schools and undertaken capacity building workshops around AI including the UNESCO MOOC on AI and Rule of Law for judges.
Jhalak serves on the Board (Academic Constituency- Alternate Member) of the Global Network Initiative, a global organization that serves as multistakeholder platform for information and communications technology (ICT) companies, civil society organizations, academics, and investor groups. Jhalak also serves on the Steering Committee for the Action Coalition on Meaningful Transparency which aims to bring together a wide range of academics, civil society organizations, companies, governments, and international organisations to work on mapping existing efforts on digital transparency and identifying potential efforts to further develop this space.
She has been Programme Manager for the Technology and Society team at CCG. Prior to CCG, she was a Visiting Researcher at Harvard Law School (HLS) focused on the governance of artificial intelligence, and the regulation of fintech and blockchain. She has also served as an Editor on the Harvard Journal for Law and Technology. Additionally, she was part of the founding Board of the HLS Blockchain and Fintech Initiative and has since been an advisor to the Board.
Jhalak began her career at PRS Legislative Research, New Delhi, India, and spent six years at PRS working across various roles to provide non-partisan analysis to Indian federal and state legislators on policy, budgets and legislation. She led PRS’ engagement with Members of Parliament and provided them with analytical input and briefings on a cross-section of legislative and policy issues. Before this role, she was an analyst with the research team at PRS tracking legislation, budgets and policy on science, technology, strategic affairs, and natural resources.
Jhalak has graduated with an LLM from Harvard Law School, Cambridge, USA on a Fulbright-Nehru Masters Fellowship. She has a five-year integrated social science and law degree from the National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata, India.
Email: jhalak.kakkar@nludelhi.ac.in
