Hannes Bastians

Hannes is a Research Scholar at LawAI. His research focuses on the regulation of general-purpose AI models under the EU AI Act, in particular on the reporting of serious incidents by providers of models with systemic risk. He is an Assistant Editor of the Cambridge Commentary on EU General-Purpose AI Law and is also taking a lead role in LawAI's workstream on the German AI Safety and Security Institute. He studied law at the Ruhr-University Bochum (First State Examination) and holds a doctorate in law (Dr. iur.) from the University of Potsdam, where his thesis examined the applicability of the EU Digital Content Directive and its German implementing legislation to non-fungible tokens. As a DAAD scholar he completed the LLM at the University of Cambridge in Intellectual Property, Technology and Information Law. He first joined LawAI as a Summer Research Fellow in 2025 and returned as a Research Scholar in 2026, following a period as a Visiting Researcher at Harvard Law School. He has previously worked as a research assistant in the technology, media and telecommunications and data protection practices of international law firms.