Law & ethics explained: FAIRagro starts legal workshop series for agrosystems research

Karlsruhe, 08 July 2025 – How can spatial research data be used in a legally secure and ethically responsible manner? This question is becoming increasingly urgent in agrosystems research - for example, when interview data, satellite data, environmental data or georeferenced sensor information is linked to personal information. As part of the FAIRagro consortium of the National Research Data Infrastructure, FIZ Karlsruhe is contributing its expertise in the field of data protection and intellectual property rights to this discourse.

A central component is the new Legal Workshop Series, initiated by Lea Sophie Singson, employee of the Intellectual Property Rights (IGR) department at FIZ Karlsruhe, and Sophie Boße from ZB MED as FAIRagro training coordinator. Lea Sophie Singson is a lawyer and works in the FAIRagro project as a data steward for law and ethics, among other things. The aim of the series is to provide researchers from the agricultural, earth and biodiversity sciences with the tools they need to deal confidently with legal and ethical issues. It is not only about the application of the GDPR or questions of data ownership, but also about anonymization techniques, international data protection standards and concrete challenges in data exchange in research networks such as the NFDI.

The first episode of the workshop series - aptly titled “Data protection on a silver platter” - took place in April and was extremely well received. The waiting list was long and the feedback from participants was consistently positive. In interactive sessions of two hours each over three consecutive days, the basics of data protection law were taught in a practical and lively manner - including group work, case studies and plenty of room for questions.

We are particularly pleased that all teaching materials from this first edition are now publicly available. Interested parties will not only find the presentation slides online, but also detailed lecture notes, a complete teaching script and worksheets with solutions. Videos are also available for those who would prefer to experience the workshop audiovisually.

The material is available here https://repository.publisso.de/resource/frl%3A6402743

FAIRagro is sending out an important signal with the Legal Workshop Series: Research not only needs data, but also the knowledge of how to handle it responsibly. The next episode is already being planned. 
Any questions? Feel free to contact our helpdesk at 

https://fairagro.net/en/helpdesk/ (English)
https://fairagro.net/helpdesk (German)