People

Identity 2.0

Identity 2.0 is a creative studio operating at the intersection of digital rights, technology and identity. It is co-founded by two award-winning creatives from underrepresented backgrounds – Arda Awais and Savena Surana. Since 2018, we have created artistic experiences which explore what it means to exist online. Our interdisciplinary work has spanned three exhibitions, printed zines, workshops and digital experiences. Previously we have worked with the likes of Feminist Internet, Goethe Institute and Soho House. We have also been named #WebChampions by Tim Berners-Lee and have been selected for the first DesignKind programme by the British Council and Pentagram. Our latest body of work is called This Machine is Black, exploring the relationship between race and technology. It first launched with an exhibition in August 2021 at LCB Depot in Leicester, supported by Leicester City Council and De Montfort University. Since then, we have expanded this exhibition digitally with an online festival and digital timeline of history launched at Mozfest 2022 and featured in Rights Con 2022.

Mimi Nguyen

Mimi Nguyen is a doctoral researcher and lecturer at Imperial College London, Faculty of Engineering, where she leads Mana Lab, a “Future of work in Blockchain” research group, and at MA Innovation Central Saint Martins, University of Arts London together with CSM NFT Lab. Her previous research on creativity and human-computer interaction has been published by Cambridge University Press, Design Studies, Design Research Society, TIME magazine, and ACM Association for Computing Machinery.

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen is the Director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and Professor of Political Communication at the University of Oxford. His research is focused on the changing role of news and media in our societies. He has written extensively about journalism, digital media, the business of news, political communication and related topics in dozens of scholarly articles, edited volumes, and books, including Ground Wars:  Personalized Communication in Political Campaigns (winner of the American Political Science  Association’s Doris Graber Award for the best book on political communication published in the last ten years) and The Power of Platforms (with Sarah Anne Ganter). In addition, he is co-author of the annual Reuters Institute Digital News Report. 

A frequent speaker at academic, industry, and policy-making conferences, he has provided expert advice to both governments and news media companies in several countries. His work has been covered by a wide variety of media all over the world, and he has written for El Pais, the Indian  Express, the Washington Post, and many other publications. He tweets at @rasmus_kleis.

Shamir Ozery

Shamir Ozery recently joined the Algorand Foundation as “Head of Web3” after nearly two and a half years as Algorand Inc’s Marketing Programs Director.

Passionate about growth, Shamir has spent the last 15 years learning, building, consulting and executing marketing campaigns with and for a wide variety of clients – from Fortune 500 companies to startups. Shamir has served as an Adjunct Professor at both University of Michigan and Northeastern University, teaching Entrepreneurial and Digital Marketing.As a self proclaimed “NFT Junkie”, Shamir is here to share his views about NFT’s, Web3 and the Digitization of Everything.

Aditi Dutta

Aditi is currently a first-year PhD student at the University of Exeter, in the department of Politics, and associated with Exeter Q-Step Centre. Before starting her PhD, she completed her Master’s degree in Data Science from the University of Southampton. Her current research interest includes studying the impacts of online misogyny, its subjectivity, understanding the differences in perception of certain comments/posts in social platforms, and using all this knowledge to measure and detect hate speeches towards women with the help of natural language processing (NLP). Because of the free use of several prejudices and the lack of legal boundaries online, oftentimes it can be seen that women would be getting a lot more discriminatory remarks as compared to their male colleagues, because of their gender and other personal identities. Using her research and background, Aditi is passionate about contributing to creating a safer and equal digital space for women.

Anne Lee Steele

Anne is the Community Manager for The Turing Way project at The Alan Turing Institute, where she facilitates an open-source community in developing best practices for data science. She is also an Early Career Fellow with the Internet Society, where she has been investigating internet supply chains and open internet infrastructure. Previously, she has worked on a variety of projects in the open ecosystem, including at Wikimedia Deutschland and the Open Knowledge Foundation, and previously worked in the data journalism and education fields. She holds a BA from Columbia University, and an MA from The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, both in anthropology and sociology.

Anran Wang

Anran is a first-year PhD researcher in Media and Communications Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). His research explores the connections between digitalisation, social relationships, and health inequalities from an ecological perspective. Many of his studies use a combination of social network analysis and qualitative methods to collect and analyse data. Currently, the three research projects he is involved in are A Global Review of Digital Inclusion Policies (UNICEF), Research and Database Construction of Building A Human Health Community (NSSFC), and Communication Strategies for Global Health and Development (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation). Besides, Anran is also a part-time MCIT Online student and teaching assistant at the University of Pennsylvania, working on using computational techniques to boost social science studies.

Asher Kessler

Asher is a PhD researcher in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. He is working on an intellectual history of Facebook/Meta with a particular focus on how actors within the company interacted with and responded to the concepts of Privacy, Freedom and Community over time, and the norms associated with them. Asher received an MA in Philosophy and Politics from the University of Edinburgh and an MSc in the Theory and History of International Relations at LSE.

Aisling Crean

Aisling Crean is a MSc student in Digital Education at Moray House School of Education and Sport at the University of Edinburgh. She is also working as a Learning Technologist at the University of St Andrews. Her work explores the increasing role that artificial intelligence is playing in education, and she’s especially interested in algorithmic injustice and its effects on marginalized groups, especially in the context of learning. She’s also interested in trustworthy A.I. and trustworthy governance in the context of education and in trust between students and teachers. Her co-authored work on trust and trustworthiness has been published by the Journal of the British Academy. She holds a PhD in Philosophy from the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University.

Ayça Atabey

Ayça is a PhD candidate at Edinburgh University. She conducts interdisciplinary research in data protection, consumer laws, and Human-Computer Interaction. Her research focuses on fairness, vulnerability and regulating AI from a gender perspective. Ayça is a PhD affiliate at the Centre for Data, Culture & Society of the Edinburgh Futures Institute and a Member of the SCRIPT Centre and VULNERA Observatory Network. She received Alan Turing Institute’s PhD Enrichment Award in 2022 and currently works as a researcher at BILGI IT Law Institute, a research assistant at 5Rights Foundation-Digital Futures Commission, and a Consultant on Data Protection, Human Rights and Migration at UN Women covering Europe & Central Asia region.

Ben Gilburt

Ben is an MSc candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute, reading Social Science of the Internet. Ben’s primary research interest in bias, exploring how technology and data create, enhance and perpetuate unfair biases, and what methods we can apply to identify and mitigate this. Ben works for Sopra Steria, a global technology consultancy, as a senior consultant in their Digital Ethics practice. Ben founded and runs the meetup community ‘AI Ethics London,’ one of the largest Ethical AI communities in the world.

Bogdana Rakova

Bogdana is a Senior Trustworthy AI fellow at Mozilla. Her work investigates the intersection of people, trust, transparency, accountability, environmental justice, and technology. Previously, she was a research manager at Accenture’s Responsible AI team where she led consumer AI impact assessment projects across multiple industries. She was a mentor at the Assembly Ethics and Governance of AI program led by Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society and MIT Media Lab. Bogdana held fellowships with Partnership on AI and the Amplified Partners venture fund. Previously she co-founded a company in the intersection of AI and the manufacturing space and spent more than four years in research and innovation labs in Silicon Valley including Samsung Research America and Singularity University, where she worked on building AI models. Influenced by her early life in post-communist Bulgaria, Bogdana is investigating the role of AI in strengthening civil society and democracy.

Brittany Burgeson O’Duffy

Brittany’s academic and professional interests lie at the intersection of social science and social media. At Oxford, Britt studies Social Science of the Internet (MSc) where her research focuses on digital wellbeing and the risk & resilience factors that predict or mediate problematic social media usage. She is also a Senior Director of Social Intelligence Analytics at Ipsos where she uses social listening data to uncover consumer insights and consult on cultural trends for major brands. Prior to moving to the UK (with her spouse and two cats), Britt lived in NYC where she worked in advertising and market research at Nielsen, Ogilvy, and as an independent consultant. She has been the insights lead on projects for Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Amazon. Britt enjoys books, baking, running, gaming, puzzles, puns, and Oxford commas. She holds a BA in English from Notre Dame and an MA in Social Psychology from NYU.

Fattori McKenna

Fattori McKenna is a graduate student in the Oxford Internet Institute’s Social Science of the Internet program. Her work focuses on the materialism of the blockchain and the lived experience of decentralised technologies, specifically through the theoretical lens of social reproduction and autonomism. Fattori holds an MA degree from The New School, and a BA in History of Art from Oxford. She has previously worked in the industry as a semiotician, brand strategist and curator, in New York, London and Helsinki. Fattori’s MSc and DPhil research is funded by the ESRC Grand Union Doctoral Training Partnership 2021-25.

Hannah Rose Kirk

Hannah is a PhD student in Social Data Science at the University of Oxford and researcher in the Online Safety team at The Alan Turing Institute. Hannah’s research focuses on production and deployment harms from AI models, and uses data-centric techniques, such as active and adversarial learning, to optimise the development of efficient and effective systems. She has researched varied forms of harms, such as hate speech and misogyny, alongside bias and fairness in language and vision models.

Jas Johl

Jas Johl is a Visiting Policy Researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute whose work focuses on global efforts to manage digital identities. Johl is a graduate of UC Berkeley, where she studied Rhetoric & Political Theory, and Oxford University, where she studied Comparative Social Policy. Johl sits on the Board of Directors of the U.S.  think tank, The Roosevelt Institute. She has served as a Senior Advisor in government on gender equity policy, and held senior roles in technology, working on information security projects at top U.S. companies

Jiaxin Duan

Jiaxin Duan is a master’s student in Television, Film and Audiovisual Communication at Zhejiang University and holds a BA in Radio and Television from Zhejiang University. Her research interests focus on digital culture and communication ethics.

Julia Slupska

Julia Slupska is a doctoral student at the Centre for Doctoral Training in Cybersecurity and the Oxford Internet Institute. Her research focuses on online safety and cybersecurity, especially technology abuse like stalking and image-based sexual abuse (‘revenge porn’). She volunteers with the Oxfordshire Sexual Abuse & Rape Crisis Centre and organises with No Tech for Tyrants, a student-led organisation working to sever the links between higher education, violent technology, and hostile immigration environments. This talk will explore how feminist principles & methods can help technologists build safer technology.

Jyothsna Gurumurthy

Jyothsna Gurumurthy is a DPhil Student at the Faculty of law, University of Oxford. Her research is situated in the areas of law, technology, data protection and IP law – specifically Deepfakes and their legal treatment. She is especially interested in the regulation of emerging technologies in a stark legislative void and aims to contribute to the discourse by finding a legal answer to the threats of technology, within existing structures and frameworks of the law. She is also a Research Assistant at the Oxford Law Tech Education Programme – a joint venture between the Department of Computer Science and the Faculty of Law at the University of Oxford. She holds a Bachelor of Civil Law Degree from the University of Oxford and a BA.LLB (Hons) from NALSAR University of Law, India.

Kaushalya Gupta

Kaushalya leads the program management of the Contract for the Web, including its flagship initiatives the Tech Policy Design Lab, the benchmarking framework, and the accountability framework. These initiatives intend to facilitate collaboration among tech companies, policymakers, regulators, and civil society to develop concrete, evidence-based solutions to the challenges facing the web. As an international development and public policy professional, Kaushalya brings diverse policy experience of working with international NGOs, the private sector, media, academia, think tanks, and governments. Her multi-sectoral background and expertise in catalyzing partnerships enables her to navigate complex interdisciplinary policy ecosystems to find collaborative solutions.

She has most recently worked with the Partnering Initiative Oxford, the UK Government’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), and the Oxford Covid-19 Government Response Tracker. At DCMS, Kaushalya co-created the Digital Skills Partnership Strategy with the public, private and charity sectors. This was to further the UK Government’s ambition of building a digitally inclusive economy. Thereafter, at The Partnering Initiative, Kaushalya was a part of the core team delivering on the UK Government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) program for building partnering capacities of 13 diverse consortia. Previously, as a Researcher to a leading Member of the Indian Parliament, Kaushalya advised policymakers on their policy positions for Parliament to improve governance, reform public services and strengthen participatory mechanisms. She campaigned with Oxfam Ireland and then led humanitarian communications and advocacy for six disaster and conflict responses at Oxfam India.

Kaushalya holds a Master of Public Policy from the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford where she was a Public Service Scholar. She also holds an MSc in International Development from University College Dublin, where she was an Erasmus Mundus Scholar. As a World Economic Forum Global Shaper, she works to address global challenges.

Konrad Kollnig

Konrad Kollnig is a DPhil student at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford, with a focus on usable privacy and autonomy in digital systems.

Liam Bekirsky

Liam is a doctoral student at the Oxford Internet Institute whose research focuses on knowledge building in the education system. He studies how educators perceive the professional and technological structures, as well as social networks in which they are embedded, and how this affects their engagement in the creation of knowledge resources. His work is at the intersection of sociology and network analysis, knowledge mobilisation, user experience design, and education.

Nai Kalema

Hi! I’m Nai (she/her), a second-year PhD student in Innovation and Public Policy at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. I am supervised by Rainer Kattel and Kate Roll. My research looks at the intersection of global digital policy, public sector digital transformation, and health. My doctoral research practically explore these areas through biometric digital identity ecosystems in Kenya and Uganda utilizing a decolonizing research methodological orientation. I have a Master’s concentrating in International Relations and a Postgraduate Certificate in Social Justice from Harvard University and a Bachelor of Arts in English concentrating in Africana Studies from George Washington University. I’ve also performed university-level coursework at Howard University. Before starting my Ph.D., I gained meaningful work experience at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and National Innovation Service. I enjoy making up recipes, strategy board games, biking, painting, and learning to play the ukulele.

Roland Chen

Roland is a researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute interested in digital life, culture, and the arts.  Currently, he is focused on contemporary music listening practices (Spotify and Apple Music for example) and its influence on our identities. He loves the ocean. In his free time, he likes to surf and dive, though it is very difficult to do that in Oxford.

Siddhartha Datta

Siddhartha Datta is a DPhil student at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on the adaptation of deep neural networks against distribution shifts.

Suanmuanlian Tonsing

Suanmuanlian Tonsing is a Doctoral Student at the School of Information, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has an M.Phil. in Sociology and was a Junior Research Fellow at the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, India. His works appear in Discourse & Communication, RePLITO, Doing Sociology and a forthcoming chapter in a book under Routledge publication.

Wanyan Wu

Wanyan Wu is a PhD candidate in the College of Media and International Culture at Zhejiang University (PRC). She earned her Master’s in Gender, Media and Culture at the London School of Economics and Political Science (UK). Her research interest lies in digital culture, gender and media culture, and digital feminist activism. Her current research focuses on the identity of virtual celebrities and the ethics of digital humans.

Utkarsh Amitabh

Utkarsh is the founder and CEO of Network Capital, one of the world’s largest mentorship and career advancement platform that empowers 150,000+ millennials to do what they love, teach what they love and make a living doing so. He is a writer at Harvard Business Review, Chevening Fellow at University of Oxford and a World Economic Forum Global Shaper who represented the community at the Annual Meeting in Davos. His new book “The Seductive Illusion of Hard Work” has become a global best seller. He also writes for Harvard Business Review, Mint and World Economic Forum. An engineer by training, Utkarsh graduated with an MBA from INSEAD Business School where he was recognized as the Andy Burgess Scholar for Social Entrepreneurship. Before starting Network Capital, Utkarsh worked at Microsoft across India, US and Europe. He was part of the team that built India’s first smart village which was recognized in the Prime Minister’s Book of Pioneering Social Innovations.

Xinyuan Luo

Xinyuan is a master’s student at the National University of Singapore and holds a BA in Communication and Media from the University of Michigan. Her research interest focuses on AI ethics, design justice, HCI, and gender and technology. Her ongoing project is about responsible AI in healthcare and the design justice of beauty apps.

Yupei Zhao

Dr Yupei Zhao (PhD in University of Leicester, UK) is an “Hundred Talent Program Young Professor” and doctorial tutor in college of Media and International Culture in Zhejiang University. She is currently chair-elected of International Communication Association Popular Media and Culture Division, director of Virtual Reality and Digital Culture Research Center, vice dean of Chinese Society for Science and Technology Journalism in Game and eSports Communication Research Professionals, Co-founder of UK-China Media and Communication Association. Meanwhile, Yupei Zhao has been invited as senior researcher in Institute of Asia and Pacific Studies, China Policy institute at University of Nottingham (UK), and the Eurasian Sport Industry at Emlyon’s Shanghai Campus, visiting professor in Xi’an-Liverpool University and Beijing Institute of Technology. Her research interests widely includes mixed-methods use to examine digital culture and platformization, global communication, media culture and industry. Particularly, she pays more attentions on eSports culture and industry, digital music and culture, virtual celebrities/fandom culture, media and platformization.

Yu Zhao

Dr Yu Zhao earned her PHD in Journalism and Communication in Fudan University in 2008, and now is the deputy-dean and professor of the College of media and international culture in Zhejiang University. She mainly focuses on digital culture, media convergence and the innovation system of creative industries. She published several essays in the above-mentioned study fields in the Chinese top journals and published 3 books. She was selected into the first-tier of Zhijiang Young Scholar Fellowship and has been an academic visitor hosted by Utrecht University (Netherlands) and the University of Oxford (UK) successively. She is an experienced advisor of broadcasting media organizations including the Phoenix Satellite TV Station, Zhejiang Satellite TV Channel, Zhejiang Film&TV Group Co.ltd and also serves as deputy secretary general of Xihu Image Promotion Association and the Chairman of Hangzhou Asian Film Festival.

Aditya Prakash

Aditya Prakash is a writer and design researcher at Quicksand Design Studio. His work with HUM 2035 won him the Next Generation Foresight Practitioners Asia Special Award in 2020. This project has been exhibited in London, Amsterdam, and New Delhi. Aditya has worked extensively within the humanitarian sector introducing foresight as a tool for vision building, internal reorganization, and innovation. He enjoys creating meaningful speculative narratives that convey research findings, as well as provoke audiences to engage in difficult and necessary conversations about the challenges of today. Aditya has a background in Economics, Philosophy, and Math. He is based in Delhi, India.

Francisco Miguel

Francisco is a Visiting Researcher at U.C. Berkeley and a PhD Researcher at the European University Institute. He holds an LL.M from NYU Law School and the European University Institute. His research focuses on platform regulation, digital rights and corporate regulatory power.

Giovanni De Gregorio

Giovanni is Postdoctoral Researcher working with the Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford. His research focuses on digital constitutionalism, platform governance and digital policy. He is the author of “Digital Constitutionalism in Europe. Reframing Rights and Powers in the Algorithmic Society” (CUP 2022).

Katherine Lou

Katherine Lou builds meaningful human connections through tech, social science, and stories.

Megan Ma

Megan Ma is a Fellow at CodeX, the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics. Her research considers the limits of legal expression, in particular how code could become the next legal language. Dr. Ma is also Managing Editor of the MIT Computational Law Report and a Research Affiliate at Singapore Management University in their Centre for Computational Law. She received her PhD in Law at Sciences Po and was a lecturer there, having taught courses in Artificial Intelligence and Legal Reasoning and Legal Semantics. She has previously been a Visiting PhD at the University of Cambridge and Harvard Law School respectively.

Paul Joseph Rivera-Carlisle

Paul Joseph Rivera-Carlisle’s work is concerned with subtle, pervasive technological power structures, conscientious of non-anthropocentric perspectives, questioning of artificiality, and curious about Alternative Intelligences. Their interest in 3D printing, poetry, and multiplicities of expression are central to their research

Plot Twisters

Plot Twisters is an immersive online game world for nurturing personal storytelling and positive self-reflection skills. In its third year of research and co-design by a small community of digital creators passionate about emotional wellbeing, Plot Twisters will be a dedicated online space for people to practice healthy self-regulation habits, individually and with other players. Set in the imaginary universe of “Twisterland,” the game will be complete with bespoke journaling minigames, identity-building activities, and other hidden gems, guided by animal characters and a playful “solarpunk” storyline.

Winnie Soon

Winnie Soon is an artistic coder and researcher interested in queering the intersections of technical and artistic practice, engaging with topics like queer code and coding, digital censorship, experimental diagramming and software publishing. With works appearing in museums, galleries, festivals, distributed networks, papers and books, they are the author of two books titled “ Aesthetic Programming: A Handbook of Software Studies” (with Geoff Cox) and “Fix My Code” (with Cornelia Sollfrank).  Winnie is the co-editor of the Software Studies Book Series (MIT Press). They are currently based in Denmark and working as Associate Professor at Aarhus University.