Opeyemi Akanbi: Student and Recent Graduate Essay Competition Winner
Penn doctoral candidate Opeyemi Akanbi is one of two winners of the Yale Law Journal’s inaugural Student and Recent Graduate Essay Competition.
The competition encourages legal scholars to examine and interpret developing legal challenges. This year’s competition focused on burgeoning issues at the intersection of law and technology, including but not limited to: surveillance, cybersecurity, digital speech, artificial intelligence and privacy.
Ms. Akanbi’s essay, “Policing Work Boundaries on the Cloud,” explores the shifting conceptualization of labor in the digital age due to increased use of cloud computing software. The essay looks at the way applications like Slack, Workplace, and Teams can be reconciled with current labor laws. While the applications can blur work boundaries, labor laws are based on a separation between work and nonwork.
Ms. Akanbi is a doctoral candidate at the Annenberg School who studies media policy issues like net neutrality and the use of digital media technologies in the context of labor and privacy. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Benjamin Cardozo School of Law and is a member of the New York bar.
As a winner of the essay competition, Akanbi’s paper will be published in the Yale Law Journal Forum, and she will receive a monetary prize.