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

Edited by: Mark Findlay, Noha Lea Halim, Sofie Schönborn

ISBN13: 9781035362073
To be Published: May 2026
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited
Country of Publication: UK
Format: Hardback
Price: £105.00





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.

Subjects:
Law and Society, IT, Internet and Artificial Intelligence Law
Contents:
Acknowledgements xiii
1. 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
2. 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
3. Alice between gendered violence and empowerment: implications for a feminist metaverse 39
Nikola Szirota
4. 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
5. Virtual selves, real consequences: understanding power in a hybrid world 81
Daniel Matter
6. AI on trial – exploring agency, accountability, and legal personhood in a digital wonderland 95
Darius Torabi
7. Debating virtual wonderland: individual agency, responsibility, and emerging questions for metaverse governance 112
David Torabi
8. 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
9. 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. Touching wonderland: the emancipatory power of haptics in the Metaverse 220
Jonathan Fiene and Philipp Müller

PART V BACK UP THE DIGITAL RABBIT HOLE
Introduction to part V 232
Noha Lea Halim and Sofie Schönborn
14. Dreaming on the riverbank – governance and power? 233
Mark Findlay
15. A kaleidoscope of ideas and perspectives about the Metaverse 247