Contributors
Jeremias’ research focuses on technology, innovation policy, and the future of work in the European Union and beyond. He is a Fellow of Magdalen College. Jeremias read law at Oxford, Paris, and Harvard Law School, and has held visiting teaching and/or research positions at institutions including Hong Kong University, the Max Planck Institute Hamburg, Renmin Law School Beijing, University College London, the University of Vienna, and Yale Law School.
https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/people/jeremias-adams-prassl
Nikolas Becker heads the Politics & Science division of the Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI) and the “Netzwerk Digital GreenTech”. Since 2021, he has been a member of the DIN Expert Group on AI Standardization and Conformity, and from 2024 to 2027, he has been appointed as a multiplier for the DIN/DKE Strategiekreis FOCUS.digital. From 2021 to 2024, he represented the stakeholder group Science in the cyber security dialogue committee of the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI). After earning his M.A. in Political Science (Universität Potsdam, UCSD) with a focus on the international political economy of intellectual property rights, he worked as a product manager for the Open Knowledge Foundation International. From 2011 to 2016, he was a member of the board of Wikimedia Deutschland.
Grischa Beier studied mechanical engineering at TU Ilmenau, UFSC (Brazil) and ITMO (Russia). From 2006 to 2014, he worked as a research assistant at Fraunhofer IPK in the field of virtual product creation. In January 2014 he received his doctorate from the TU Berlin. Since September 2014, Grischa Beier has been working at RIFS Potsdam, where, as head of the research group “Digitalization and Impact on Sustainability”, he researches the social and ecological effects of future digitalized and networked industrial production, among other things. Since July 2023, he has held the professorship “Sustainability in Digitalization” at the University of Potsdam.
Christoph Bieber is a research professor at CAIS with the research programme Digital Democratic Innovations and focuses on the following research areas:
- Digitalisation and Democracy
- Elections and election campaigns
- Ethics and responsibility in politics
- Transparency and Public Communication
danah boyd is a Partner Researcher at Microsoft Research and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Georgetown University. I am also the founder of Data & Society. I am an academic and a scholar and my research examines the intersection between technology and society.
https://www.danah.org/
I am an innovation economist and digital policy expert, working at the intersection of technology, geopolitics, economics and society. I am Honorary Professor in the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose at UCL in London and I am part of the High-level Roundtable for the New European Bauhaus set up by the EC President Ursula von der Leyen. I I sit on the Board of RAI, the Italian public broadcasting company, and I am the former President of the Italian national innovation Fund.
I have been advising the United Nations on Digital Cities and Digital Rights and I am the former CTO of the City of Barcelona. I have leading big European Research and Innovation projects related to digital sovereignty, digital democracy and crypto platforms. Forbes Magazine included me in the Top 50 Women in Tech in 2018.
Kilian Buehling received his master’s degree in Economics from the Dresden University of Technology (TU Dresden), where he subsequently worked as Research Assistant in the Junior Research Group Knowledge and Technology Transfer. He is currently conducting research in the Research Group “Dynamics of Digital Mobilisation” on transnational communication processes and network dynamics of anti-democratic and conspiracy theory groups in online information ecosystems.
Dr. Tina Comes is Full Professor in Decision-Making & Digitalisation at the University of Maastricht, Visiting Professor at the Université Dauphine, France, a member of the Norwegian Academy for Technological Sciences and the Academia Europaeae. She serves as the Scientific Director of the 4TU.Centre for Resilience Engineering, as Principle Investigator on Climate Resilience for AMS, and advises the European Commission on its strategic crisis management.
Zachary Cooper is a legal scholar, researcher and lecturer for the Amsterdam Law & Technology Institute of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His current research program focuses on the ways in which Generative AI technologies are able to, sometimes subtly, subvert and confound foundational legal tenets, and how techno-regulatory incoherence is exploited to emancipate emergent tech from the control of the law.
At the Weizenbaum Institute, Zachary will be investigating the ongoing viability of “exclusive rights” as a means of stimulating a creative market in a landscape where AI-assisted works can be generated at a massive scale with minimal human input, and will consider alternative IP rights frameworks that may better serve copyright’s foundational objectives.
Zachary has written and taught courses for the Vrije Universiteit Amasterdam in The Law and Ethics of Robots & Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain and Other Disruptive Business-tech Challenges to the Law, Multinationals and the Platform Economy, & Data Analytics and Privacy, and is currently co-editor of the European Journal of Law & Technology with Dr. Silvia De Conca. Zachary’s most recent article on techno-regulatory incoherence, co-authored with Prof. Arno R. Lodder, was published in Edward Elgar’s Research Handbook on Law & Technology.
Ame (sounds like “Amy”) Elliott is a designer and researcher exploring how technology encodes values and shifts power. She spent 15 years in Silicon Valley working on collaboration technology at Xerox PARC and tech strategy at IDEO. As Design Director for Simply Secure, she led multidisciplinary teams working on privacy and accountability for AI, IoT, and digital rights applications. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in Human-Computer Interaction.
Lorenz Erdmann leads the Business Unit Foresight for Organizations from Research and Civil Society at Fraunhofer ISI’s Competence Center Foresight. He graduated from the Technical University Berlin with a degree in Environmental Sciences and Technology. Prior to his current role, he gained work experience at the Institute for Futures Studies and Technology Assessment IZT and later joined Fraunhofer ISI’s Competence Center Foresight in 2011.
Esther Görnemann joined the Weizenbaum Institute 2023 as a research synthesis referee. At the core of her work is synthesizing the state of research on key issues of the digitally networked society in order to inform future research and to support the knowledge transfer of knowledge from the research groups towards policy and the public.
Before joining the Weizenbaum Institute, she worked as a research and teaching associate (post-doc) at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, in management consulting (KPMG IT- and Finance Advisory), and in different positions in the photovoltaic industry. Esther holds a Master’s degree in International Marketing, a Master’s degree in Business Management and received her PhD in Information Systems in 2022 on the topic of values, emotions and moments of truth in Human-agent interaction with anthropomorphized computer agents.
Dr.-Ing. Mennatullah Hendawy ist eine interdisziplinäre Stadtplanerin, die an den Schnittstellen von Städten, Medien und Technologie in Richtung Gerechtigkeit und Nachhaltigkeit arbeitet. Hendawy promovierte 2021 am Fachbereich “Planen Bauen Umwelt” der TU Berlin in Deutschland mit der Note summa cum laude. In ihrer Doktorarbeit untersuchte sie die Mediatisierung der Stadtentwicklung in Kairo als ein lokales und zugleich globales Beispiel.
Dr Mennatullah Hendawy is an interdisciplinary urban planner working at the intersection of cities, media and technology towards equity and sustainability. Hendawy received her doctorate in 2021 from the Department of Planning, Building and Environment at TU Berlin in Germany with the grade summa cum laude. In her doctoral thesis, she examined the mediatisation of urban development in Cairo as a local and global example.
Christian Herzog is a transdisciplinary researcher with a PhD in engineering and an M.A. in applied ethics. Since 2023, he has been appointed Professor for the Ethical, Legal, and Societal Aspects of AI at the University of Lübeck. Christian Herzog investigates ethical issues by focusing on power dynamics, epistemic injustice, and a non-reductionist approach to centering on the diverse ways epistemes, identities, and values are generated, contested, proliferated, and protected within technologically mediated assemblages. Dr. Daniela Zetti is a historian of media technology at the University of Lübeck.
Recent publications:
- Bory, Paolo, and Daniela Zetti. 2022. “Digital Federalism. Balancing Autonomy, Authority and Automation.” Itinera 49: 6–17. https://www.sggssh.ch/sites/default/files/files/9783796545092.pdf
- Gugerli, David, and Daniela Zetti. 2024. “Writing the History of Computing: The First Half Century.” In Writing Computer and Information History. Approaches, Connections, and Reflections, edited by William Aspray, 163–90. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Lena Hoffmann is a Consultant at the Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI), where she coordinates the project “Enabling Green Computing and Digital Transformation” (ECO:DIGIT). Previously, she worked as a Research Associate at the Technical University of Berlin in the department of “Socio-ecological Transformation and Sustainable Digitization.” She also served as a sustainability expert in the BMUV’s AI flagship project “Green Consumption Assistant,” which focused on AI-supported promotion of sustainable consumption on the internet. She holds a Master’s degree in Sustainable Resource Management (M.Sc.) from the Technical University of Munich and was involved in organizing the Bits&Bäume Conference in 2022.
Dr. Dietmar Kammerer joined the Weizenbaum Institute in November 2022 as a research data officer. He is responsible for the development and operation of the Open Acces Repository “Weizenbaum Library” as well as for all aspects of reserach data management.
Dietmar studied Literature, Politics and Philosophy in Konstanz, England and Berlin. He received his doctorate in 2008 at the Department of Cultural History and Theory, Humboldt University of Berlin with a dissertation on images of video surveillance. From 2011, he worked as a research associate at the Institute for Media Studies at the University of Marburg with a special focus on film theory and media history. He developed and operated the Open Access Repository for Media Studies and has served as technical and administrative project coordinator in the National Research Data Infrastructure.
His research interests include surveillance, privacy, data protection, Open Science, film and media theory.
Prof. Dr. habil. Sigrid Kannengießer is professor of Communication Studies with a focus on Media Sociology. Previously, she was professor of Communication and Media Studies with a focus on Media Society at the University of Bremen. She rejected appointments as a professor to the University of Paderborn and the Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen.
Since the late 90s, Felix Kronlage-Dammers has always been active in various open source development communities, from DarwinPorts, OpenDarwin to OpenBSD and nowadays the Sovereign Cloud Stack. His interests range from monitoring and observability to infrastructure-as-code to building and scaling communities and organizations. He is a techie at heart and enjoys empowering others to do great things. He is part of the extended board of OSBA and describes himself as a Unix/Open Source nerd.
https://hazardous.org/
Prof Dr Florian Meissner is Professor of Media Management and Journalism at Macromedia University of Applied Sciences in Cologne, Germany. He serves as the Chair of the Risk and Crisis Communication Section of ECREA and is the Principal Investigator of a research project called “Digital Fitness for Citizens.” This project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research with the aim of promoting cybersecurity awareness and behaviour at the societal level.
Professor Brent Mittelstadt is the OII’s Director of Research, an Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow. He also coordinates of the Governance of Emerging Technologies (GET) research programme which works across ethics, law, and emerging information technologies. He is a leading data ethicist and philosopher specializing in AI ethics, professional ethics, and technology law and policy.
https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/profiles/brent-mittelstadt/
Dr Florian Meißner teaches media management and journalism at the Cologne campus of Macromedia University. He is an expert in crisis communication and international journalism research. At the interface of these two fields, he completed his doctorate at TU Dortmund University on German and Japanese media coverage of the Fukushima disaster. The project took him to Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, on a scholarship.
Anne Mollen’s research focuses on sustainability and digitalisation as well as automation in media communication and data-centric technologies. She studied Communication and Political Science at WWU Münster (B.A.) from 2006 to 2009 and International Communications at the University of Leeds (M.A.) from 2009 onwards. She then worked as a research assistant in the Collaborative Research Centre 597 „Transformations of the State“ at the University of Bremen, where she worked in a project on the Transnationalisation of public spheres in the European Union. She received her PhD in 2018 with a thesis on the socio-technical constitution of digital communicative spaces. She was the chair of YECREA from 2016 to 2018.
Lubna’s work lies at the intersection of ecological sustainability, behavioral psychology, digital entrepreneurship & innovation, and social justice. She is an academic, educator, activist and artist. She is particularly interested in understanding the drivers of (un)sustainable decision‐making and behavioral change for sustainability. She has extensive experience with post‐conflict and refuge settings and has eclectic backgrounds, including in ecology and the performing arts.
Prof Dr Angela Sasse studied psychology in Wuppertal and Great Britain in the 1980s. She completed her Master’s degree in Occupational Psychology in Sheffield and gained her doctorate in Computer Science at the University of Birmingham.
From 2003, she was Professor of Human-Centred Technology at University College London. From 2012 to 2017, she headed the British Research Institute for Empirical Security Research. In 2015, she was admitted to the Royal Academy of Engineering. In 2018, she took over the Chair of Human-Centred Security at the Horst Görtz Institute for IT Security at Ruhr University Bochum and was admitted to the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 2023.
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Ina Schieferdecker is Honorary Professor for Software-Based Innovations at the Technical University of Berlin. She was Director of Research for Technological Sovereignty and Innovation at the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, focusing on modern key technologies such as quantum technologies, materials technologies, microelectronics, communication, software and AI technologies, as well as the future of work and value creation. Previously, she was Co-Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems, Professor for Quality Engineering of Open Distributed Systems at the Technical University of Berlin and co-founder of the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society. She is a member of the German Academy of Science and Engineering acatech and an honorary member of the German Testing Board.
Josephine B. Schmitt, PhD, is scientist and certified Scrum Master at Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS). Her expertise lies at the intersection of media psychology, communication sciences, media education, and science and technology studies. She is building bridges between research and practice. Among others, she shapes and explores new methods of collaboration among researchers. Her focus is on creating and translating scientific insights into practical applications using innovative methods. In her research, she delves also into topics such as civic education on the internet, hate speech and fake news.
https://www.maxschulze.com/
I’m interested in how the virtual and real worlds interact with one another. In particular, my research interests have lied in how to ensure and enhance democratic participatory structures in the digital era. Mainly based on but not limited to quantitative and mixed methods, I’ve researched people’s socio-economic activities, people’s behavioral changes, and digital media activities.
Marc Steen works as a senior research scientist at TNO, a leading research and technology organization in the Netherlands. He earned MSc, PDEng and PhD degrees in Industrial Design Engineering at Delft University of Technology. He worked at Philips and KPN before joining TNO. He is an expert in Human-Centred Design, Value-Sensitive Design, Responsible Innovation, and Applied Ethics of Technology and Innovation.
Christian Strippel is research group leader of the Weizenbaum Panel and Methods Lab research units at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society. His doctoral project is dedicated to the convergent use of television and the Internet.
Professor Sandra Wachter is Professor of Technology and Regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford where she researches the legal and ethical implications of AI, Big Data, and robotics as well as Internet and platform regulation. Her current research focuses on profiling, inferential analytics, explainable AI, algorithmic bias, diversity, and fairness, as well as governmental surveillance, predictive policing, human rights online, and health tech and medical law.
https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/profiles/sandra-wachter/
Ines Weigand graduated in 2020 from the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) with a Master’s degree in Communication in Social and Economic Contexts. In her collaborative Master’s thesis, she investigated potentials of the Open Science movement for a change in the relationship between humans and nature. In order to investigate this problem, which is typical for the Anthropocene, she used methods of critical making and experiential learning.
After gaining experience in (knowledge) transfer and participatory urban development for two years at the University of the Arts and the public innovation lab CityLAB Berlin, she returned to the University of the Arts in October 2022. Here, she conducts research in the project “Design, Diversity and New Commons“, at the UdK Berlin / Weizenbaum Institute.
Ines Weigand builds bridges between science, society and politics and benefits from her interdisciplinary background and pragmatic attitude.
She is interested in alternative learning environments, new forms of knowledge production and concepts of sustainability that lead to a socio-ecological transformation.
Annemarie is a Master’s student of cognitive science at the University of Osnabrück and a student assistant in the Ethics of AI working group. Due to her interdisciplinary studies, she has a background in AI and philosophy. She is particularly interested in the intersection of AI and queer/feminist theory.
