About the IAPP

Anna Morgan is a partner at Bird & Bird, based in the Dublin office, where she leads the Irish Data Protection and Privacy practice. Prior to joining Bird & Bird in June 2022, Anna was a Deputy Commissioner and Head of Legal Affairs at the Irish Data Protection Commission for more than 5 years, where her role included representing the DPC on a regular basis at plenary and expert sub-group meetings of the European Data Protection Board. As part of this European-level work Anna was the lead rapporteur for the EDPB's Guidelines on Transparency under the GDPR. Separately, she established the DPC's Children's Policy function and led the DPC's work on children's data protection issues. Of particular note, Anna was responsible for the production of the DPC’s children’s guidelines (“Children Front and Centre: Fundamentals for a Child Oriented Approach to Data Processing”). More generally, Anna oversaw a range of complex and significant cross-border inquiries conducted by the DPC. Prior to working at the DPC, Anna was in private legal practice for 10 years specialising in data protection, commercial litigation and regulatory litigation, most recently at one of the top five Irish law firms. 

Anna’s practice areas span both advisory/compliance data protection matters, as well as contentious data protection work where she has significant experience of data protection focused litigation. Anna advises organisations on the broad spectrum of privacy, data protection, data retention and data security issues. She has a special interest, and significant expertise, in matters involving the processing of children's personal data, and a substantial part of her practice is focused on advising clients on these matters and the related areas of online safety and content moderation.

Anna has spoken at numerous data protection conferences including the IAPP Global Privacy Summit (USA), the Irish Centre for European Law Annual Data Protection Conferences, the Computers Privacy and Data Protection Conference (Brussels), the Bitkom Privacy Conference (Germany), as well as other events across Europe and the US organised by CIPL, PRIVO, Common Sense, academic institutions, and leading law firms. She has also appeared as a witness (on behalf of the DPC) before a number of Irish parliamentary (Oireachtas) Committee hearings, including most recently in relation to pre-legislative scrutiny of the General Scheme of the Online Safety and Media Regulation Bill.

Additionally, Anna is a regular guest lecturer at a number of academic institutions including the Law Society of Ireland, the Honourable Society of King's Inns and Trinity College Dublin. Anna is currently a doctoral candidate in law at Trinity College Dublin, undertaking her Ph.D. research on how to operationalise children's data subject rights under the GDPR.