Laura DeNardis is an author and professor and is globally recognized as one of the most read scholars in Internet governance. She is a tenured Professor in the School of Communication at American University in Washington, DC, where she serves as Faculty Director of the Internet Governance Lab. In 2018, she was the recipient of American University’s highest faculty award, Scholar-Teacher of the Year. Her six books include The Internet in Everything: Freedom and Security in a World with No Off Switch (Yale University Press, 2020), The Global War for Internet Governance (Yale University Press, 2014), Opening Standards: The Global Politics of Interoperability (MIT Press, 2011), and Protocol Politics: The Globalization of Internet Governance (MIT Press, 2009). With a background in information engineering and a doctorate in science and technology studies (STS), she studies the social and political implications of Internet technical architecture and governance. She is an affiliated fellow of the Yale Law School Information Society Project and served as its Executive Director from 2008 to 2011. She is also currently a Senior Fellow at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. Her expertise and scholarship have been featured in Science Magazine, the Economist, the New York Times, Time, Christian Science Monitor, Slate, Forbes, the Atlantic, and the Wall Street Journal, on National Public Radio, and by Reuters, among others. She holds an engineering science degree from Dartmouth College, an MEng from Cornell University, a PhD in science and technology studies from Virginia Tech, and she was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from Yale Law School.
Derrick L. Cogburn is a tenured professor at American University in Washington, DC. He has a joint appointment in the School of International Service, where he serves in the International Communication and International Development Programs, and in the Kogod School of Business, where he serves in the Department of Information Technology and Analytics. He also serves as the founding Executive Director of the AU Institute on Disability and Public Policy and is a Faculty Director of the Internet Governance Lab. He directs the Center for Research on Collaboratories and Technology Enhanced Learning Communities (COTELCO), an award-winning social science research collaboratory investigating the social and technical factors that influence geographically distributed collaborative knowledge work, particularly between developed and developing countries. His research and teaching also includes global information and communication technology and socioeconomic development, multistakeholder institutional mechanisms for Internet governance, and transnational policy networks and epistemic communities. He has published in major journals such as Telecommunications Policy, International Studies Perspectives, Journal of International Affairs, Assistive Technology, and Information Technologies and International Development. He has published with or advised the Center for Strategic and International Studies, UN World Institute for Development Economics Research, World Bank, UNESCO, International Telecommunication Union, and UN Economic Commission for Africa. He has served as principal investigator or co–principal investigator in externally supported research of over $11 million, with grants from sources as diverse as the National Science Foundation, US Department of Education, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft Research, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, and the Nippon Foundation. He is editor of the Palgrave Macmillan book series Information Technology and Global Governance. He is past president of the Information Technology and Politics section of the American Political Science Association and past president of the International Communication section of the International Studies Association. He is a founding member and past vice chair of the Global Internet Governance Academic Network. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Oklahoma, and master’s and doctoral degrees from Howard University. @derrickcogburn
Nanette S. Levinson is a faculty director of the Internet Governance Lab and a tenured faculty member in the School of International Service (SIS) at American University, where she served as Associate Dean from 1988 to 2005 and from 2015 to 2018. She also serves as Academic Director of the SIS/Sciences-Po Exchange Program. Her research and teaching focus on Internet and global governance, including knowledge transfer and innovation in complex, cross-national, cross-cultural, and cross-organizational systems (such as online settings). She has studied Internet governance since the early days of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and has been involved in research collaborations with colleagues in France, in Japan, and at American University. She served as the first elected chair of the Global Internet Governance Academic Network. Her leadership positions also include first woman chair of the National Conference on the Advancement of Research, cofounder of the American Society for Public Administration’s section on Government and Business, and past president/chair of both the International Studies Association’s International Communication section and the American Political Science Association’s Information Technology and Politics section. Additionally, she founded and serves as cochair of the Hawaii International Conference on Systems Science’s Digital and Social Media Minitrack on Culture, Identity, and Inclusion. Recipient of awards including those for outstanding teaching, program development, honors programming, academic affairs administration, and multicultural affairs, she has designed cocurricular collaborative learning opportunities on campus and research-based training programs for the private and public sectors. In 2011, the Ashoka Foundation presented her with its Award for Outstanding Contributions to Social Entrepreneurship Education. She received her bachelors, masters, and doctorate degrees from Harvard University.
Francesca Musiani (PhD, socioeconomics of innovation, MINES ParisTech, 2012), has been Associate Research Professor at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) since 2014. She is Deputy Director of the Center for Internet and Society of CNRS, which she cofounded in 2019. She is also an associate researcher at the Center for the Sociology of Innovation (i3/MINES ParisTech) and a Global Fellow at the Internet Governance Lab of American University in Washington, DC. Since 2006 her research work has focused on Internet governance, in an interdisciplinary perspective that merges information and communication sciences, science and technology studies (STS), and international law. Her most recent research explores the development and use of encryption technologies in secure messaging (European Commission’s Horizon 2020 project NEXTLEAP, 2016–2018), digital resistances to censorship and surveillance in the Russian Internet (French National Research Agency, or ANR, project ResisTIC, 2018–2021), and the governance of web archives (ANR project Web90, 2014–2017 and CNRS Attentats-Recherche project ASAP, 2016). Her theoretical work explores STS approaches to Internet governance, with particular attention paid to socio-technical controversies and to governance by architecture and by infrastructure. Her most recent book is Qu’est-ce qu’une archive du Web? (What is a web archive?, OpenEdition Press, 2019), with C. Paloque-Bergès, V. Schafer, and B. Thierry, recipient of the OpenEdition Books Select distinction. She is academic editor for Internet Policy Review. She is vice president for research of the Internet Society France. Since 2017, she has cochaired the Communication Policy and Technology section of the International Association for Media and Communication Research, after having led its emerging scholars network (2012–2016). @franmusiani / https://