Advisory Board
Mike Ananny
Associate Professor of Communication and Journalism, USC Annenberg
Mike Ananny is an Associate Professor of Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School, where he researches the public ethics of communication systems, specifically intersections of journalism practice and technology design, the sociotechnical dynamics of networked news infrastructures, and the power of algorithmic systems. He is a Faculty Fellow with USC's Society of Fellows in the Humanities, an Affiliate Faculty with USC's Science, Technology, and Society program, co-directs the interdisciplinary research group MASTS ("Media as SocioTechnical Systems"), and has held fellowships with Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the Berggruen Institute, the Columbia School of Journalism's Tow Center, and the Trudeau Foundation. He has published in various academic venues including Science, Technology, and Human Values; Social Media+Society; Critical Studies in Media Communication; Journal of Computer Mediated Communication; International Journal of Communication; Digital Journalism; and New Media & Society. He is the author of Networked Press Freedom: Creating Infrastructures for a Public Right to Hear (MIT Press, 2018) and co-editor (with Laura Forlano and Molly Wright Steenson) of Bauhaus Futures (MIT Press, 2019).
Emily Bell
Director, Tow Center for Digital Journalism & Professor, Columbia Journalism School
Emily Bell is a Leonard Tow Professor of Journalism at Columbia Journalism School and is the founding director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia which is known for its research into the intersection of technology and journalism. Prior to her work at Columbia, Dr. Bell was a writer and editor both in print and online for Guardian News and Media in London. Bell served as the editor-in-chief across the Guardian websites and was also the director of digital content for Guardian News and Media, leading the web team in developing the fields of live blogging, multimedia formats, data and social media. She is the co-author, along with CW Anderson and Clay Shirky, of the work “Post Industrial Journalism: Adapting to the Present” (Columbia, 2012).
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun
Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media, Simon Fraser University
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun currently serves as the Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media at Simon Fraser University and leads the Digital Democracies Group, which aims to develop research at the intersection between the humanities and data sciences to address questions of social justice to counter the spread of online “echo chambers,” hate speech, discriminatory algorithms, and mis/disinformation. Prior to her professorship at Simon Fraser, Dr. Chun was Professor and Chair of the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, and was a Visiting Professor at AI Now at NYU; the Velux Visiting Professor of Management, Politics and Philosophy at the Copenhagen Business School; the Wayne Morse Chair for Law and Politics at the University of Oregon, Visiting Professor at Leuphana University (Luneburg, Germany), and a Visiting Associate Professor in the History of Science Department at Harvard, of which she is an Associate. Wendy Chun is the author of several works including Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics (MIT, 2006), Programmed Visions: Software and Memory (MIT, 2011), Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media (MIT, 2016), and the co-author of Pattern Discrimination (University of Minnesota & Meson Press, 2019).
Ignacio Cofone
Assistant Professor of Law, McGill University
Ignacio Cofone is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law at McGill University where he teaches courses in privacy law, business associations, and artificial Intelligence law. Dr. Cofone’s research explores the ways in which law should adapt to technological and social change, focusing on privacy and algorithmic decision-making. Before joining the McGill faculty, he was a research fellow at the NYU Information Law Institute, a resident fellow at the Yale Law School Information Society Project, and a legal advisor for the City of Buenos Aires. He holds a law degree from Austral University, an LLM and JSD from Yale Law School, an MA from the University of Bologna, and a joint Ph.D. from Erasmus University and Hamburg University where he served as an Erasmus Mundus Fellow.
Gabriella Coleman
Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy, McGill University
Gabriella Coleman is currently the Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy at McGill University. She holds a Ph.D. in Socio-cultural Anthropology from the University of Chicago and focuses her work on the culture and ethics of hacking, with a specialization in the free software movement and the digital protest group Anonymous. Prior to her joining the McGill faculty in 2014, Dr. Coleman was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. She is has written for media outlets including the New York Times, Slate, WIRED, MIT Technology Review, the Huffington Post, and the Atlantic and is also the author of Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking (Princeton University Press, 2012) and Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous (Verso, 2014). Coleman is also the founder and editor of Hack_Curio, a video portal into the cultures of hacking.
Carly Kind
Director, Ada Lovelace Institute
Carly Kind is the current Director of the Ada Lovelace Institute, an independent research institute and deliberative body which aims to ensure that data and AI prioritize the needs of people and society. Kind is a human rights lawyer and has worked with the European Commission, the Council of Europe, and several UN bodies and civil society organizations since 2015. Kind was formerly the Legal Director of Privacy International, an NGO which aims to promote data rights and governance.
Dawn Nakagawa
Executive Vice President of the Berggruen Institute
Dawn Nakagawa is the Executive Vice President of the Berggruen Institute, which was launched in 2010 with Dawn as its first employee. The mission of the organization is to deepen our understanding of the great transformations of our time and develop social and political institutions adapted to them. Dawn is co-director of the Future of Democracy program area and oversees special projects such as the Renovating Democracy for the Digital Society project, which works with policy makers and academics to understand the impact of changes in communications technology on democratic institutions and how to adapt. Prior to joining the Berggruen Institute, Dawn was the Executive Vice President of the Pacific Council on International Policy, a global affairs organization based in Los Angeles. She also co-directed the California Adaptation Advisory Council to the State of California under Governor Schwarzenegger. Dawn has also worked as a consultant for McKinsey & Company, where she developed growth strategy for Fortune 500 companies in a variety of industries, focusing on the high tech and biotech industries. She holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and an undergraduate degree in Political Science from McGill University. Dawn sits on the advisory board of Blueprints and the Values Schools charter organization, Think Long Committee, Inc. and is a founding member of the LA chapter of Awesome Foundation.
Mutale Nkonde
Fellow, Digital Civil Society Lab at Stanford University
Mutale Nkonde is the founding CEO of AI For the People (AFP) a non-profit communications agency. AFP’s mission is to eliminate the under-representation of black professionals in the technology sector by 2030. AFP works at the intersection of racial justice and tech and is currently working on a project that seeks to reduce engagement with racially targeted online disinformation in partnership with Moveon.org. She is a member of the Tik Tok Content Moderation Advisory Board, a UN Advisor on Race and AI and in the process of writing her first book named Automated Anti Blackness, Why We Need to Name Race to Create Just Technological Futures, as Faculty Fellow at the Notre Dame Institute of Advanced Study.
Maria Ressa
Journalist, Executive Editor, & CEO, Rappler
Maria Ressa is a journalist and author, as well as the co-founder of Rappler, a Philippine online news website. Prior to her work at Rappler, Ressa was a lead investigative reporter stationed in Southeast Asia for CNN. She is the author of Seeds of Terror: An Eyewithness Account of Al-Qaeda’s Newest Center (Free Press, 2003) and From Bin Laden to Facebook: 10 Days of Abduction, 10 Years of Terrorism (Imperial College Press, 2013), which focus on the rise of terrorism in Southeast Asia. An alum of Princeton University, Ressa has taught courses in politics and the press in Southeast Asia for Princeton, and in broadcast journalism for the University of the Philippines.
Derek Ruths
Associate Professor of Computer Science, McGill University
Derek Ruths is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at McGill University and the Founding Director of the Centre for Social & Cultural Data Science. Prior to joining the McGill faculty in 2009, he received his Ph.D. in Computer Science at Rice University. Dr. Ruths' work focuses on the problem of characterizing and predicting the large-scale dynamics of human behavior in online social platforms, and frequently pursues his research in collaboration with experts in the social sciences, humanities, and in industry. His work has been published in journals and conferences including Science, EMNLP, ICWSM, and PLoS Computational Biology. He currently leads the Network Dynamics Laboratory and its research on social informatics, social media analytics, and natural language processing.
Anya Schiffrin
Director, Technology, Media, and Communication Specialization at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs
Anya Schiffrin is the director of the Technology, Media, and Communications specialization at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Prior to joining the faculty at Columbia, Schiffrin worked as a journalist for 10 years in Europe and Asia and was a Knight-Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. A prominent writer of journalism, development, the media in Africa, and the extractive sector, Schiffrin has most recently authored several books entitled African Muckraking: 75 Years of African Investigative Journalism (Jacana, 2017) and Global Muckraking: 100 Years of Investigative Reporting from Around the World (New Press, 2014). She currently sits on the Global Board of the Open Society Foundations and the advisory board of the Natural Resource Governance Institute.
Ben Scott
Executive Director, Reset & Advocacy Adviser, Luminate
Ben Scott is Executive Director at Reset, an initiative run by Luminate in partnership with The Sandler Foundation focussed on tackling digital threats to democracy, where he is responsible for strategic direction, overseeing the coordination of policy, technology and civic engagement work, and providing expert counsel on policy development and advocacy. Ben is also policy and advocacy advisor at Luminate. Prior to joining Luminate, Ben co-led the Stiftung Neue Verantwortung (SNV) in Berlin, where he helped to develop it into a leading tech policy voice in German politics. He also was a senior adviser to New America in Washington DC, where he helped design the Public Interest Technology Initiative. During the 2016 presidential campaign in the US, Ben led the technology policy advisory group for the Clinton campaign. Previously, Ben was Policy Adviser for Innovation at the US Department of State, where he helped steward the 21st Century Statecraft agenda, with a focus on technology policy, social media, and development. Before this, Ben led the Washington office of Free Press, a public interest organisation expanding affordable access to an open internet and fostering more public service journalism.
Craig Silverman
Reporter & Media Editor, BuzzFeed News
Craig Silverman is a journalist, author and the media editor of BuzzFeed News where he covers platforms, online disinformation, a0nd media manipulation. Craig is also the editor of the European Journalism Centre’s Verification Handbook series which offers world-class guidance on how to verify online content and investigate disinformation and media manipulation. He was named to the Politico 50 for his work exposing fake news and its effect on American politics and is the recipient of the Carey McWilliams Award from the American Political Science Association, which honors “a major journalistic contribution to our understanding of politics.” His 2019 series exposing a global Facebook advertising scam was named investigation of the year by the Canadian Association of Journalists. His journalism and books have also been honored by the Mirror Awards, U.S. National Press Club, National Magazine Awards (Canada), and Crime Writers of Canada.
Jonathan Sterne
James McGill Chair in Culture and Technology, McGill University
Jonathan Sterne is a professor in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies and the James McGill Chair in Culture and Technology at McGill University. He received his Ph.D. from the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Sterne’s work focuses on sound studies, media theory and historiography, science and technology studies, new media, disability studies, music, and cultural studies. He is currently working on projects which consider instruments and signal processing; the intersections of disability, technology and perception; and the politics of artificial intelligence. He is the author of MP3: The Meaning of a Format (Duke, 2012) and The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction (Duke, 2003). His upcoming work is entitled Diminished Faculties: A Political Phenomenology of Impairment (Duke 2021) and he is co-author of the upcoming work Tuning Time: Histories of Sound and Speed with Mara Mills.