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Governing Virtual Wonderland: Power, Rules, and Rebellion in the Metaverse

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Governing Virtual Wonderland: Power, Rules, and Rebellion in the Metaverse

Author: Mark Findlay; Noha Lea Halim; Sofie Schönborn
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 9781035362073

Published In: June 2026
Format: Hardback
Jurisdiction: U.K. ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

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Description
Contents

Details

In this volume, young voices craft a fresh exploration of living and working in virtual worlds. Using Alice in Wonderland as a guiding metaphor, contributors address profound and urgent questions: Who am I online? Who decides what is possible in virtual worlds? How can these spaces be made safe, fair, and empowering?

Through specially commissioned short essays and reflections, emerging voices with extensive experience of digital environments evaluate key challenges of governance and personhood within the metaverse. Drawing on diverse disciplinary insights, chapters investigate how design choices subtly function as constraints and possibilities, how identities transform across platforms and how communities build their own norms. Ultimately, the book emphasises the importance of treating the metaverse as a lived social space and prioritising the voices of its first-hand navigators. It outlines strategies for designing policies that protect individuals while simultaneously promoting agency, imagination and inclusion within virtual worlds like the metaverse, both now and in the future.

Governing Virtual Wonderland is an essential read for scholars, students, and those interested in regulation and governance in the new digital age. It is also useful for those across the disciplines of technology and AI, law, political science, philosophy of data science and computer science.

Acknowledgements xiii

Introduction 1

Noha Lea Halim and Sofie Schönborn

PART I DOWN THE DIGITAL RABBITHOLE: IDENTITY, REPRESENTATION AND GENDER – WHO AM I,

WHO ARE WE?

Introduction to part I 14

Noha Lea Halim and Sofie Schönborn

Alice meets herself and others: understanding the relevance of diverse representation, identification, and immersive

experience in the Metaverse 17

Bethany Rhea Thomas and Auxane Boch

Alice between gendered violence and empowerment: implications for a feminist metaverse 39

Nikola Szirota

Wonderland rebooted: Alice’s gaming odyssey in the Metaverse 57

Auxane Boch and Bethany Rhea Thomas

PART II NEGOTIATIONS ON GOVERNANCE, POWER AND AGENCY – WHO PLAYS BY WHAT RULES

Introduction to part II 77

Noha Lea Halim and Sofie Schönborn

Virtual selves, real consequences: understanding power in a hybrid world 81

Daniel Matter

AI on trial – exploring agency, accountability, and legal personhood in a digital wonderland 95

Darius Torabi

Debating virtual wonderland: individual agency, responsibility, and emerging questions for metaverse governance 112

David Torabi

Echo without echoes: a creator’s paradox 135

Ivan Daldoss

PART III AND WHAT REMAINS? PRIVACY, ANONYMITY AND LEGAL PROTECTIONS

Introduction to part III 137

Noha Lea Halim and Sofie Schönborn

Through the Looking Glass: AI as an inventor in the Metaverse 140

Konstantinos Tsakiliotis

10.

Virtual jurisdictions and data protection in cross-border arbitration: a comparative analysis of India and Switzerland in the age of the Metaverse 157

Somya Singh

11.

Are we at risk of Alice in Wonderland syndrome? 189

Mark Findlay

PART IV TECHNOLOGIES OF POSSIBILITY EMANCIPATION AND EMBODIMENT:

Introduction to part IV 194

Noha Lea Halim and Sofie Schönborn

12.

The chaos of blockchain-based dispute resolution mechanisms: lessons learnt from the Queen’s croquet in

Wonderland 197

Narges Keshavarz Bahadori

13.