Conference: Digital Resilience in a Multipolar World

Azadeh Akbari
Center for Critical Computational Studies (C³S)

Azadeh Akbari is Professor of Critical Data & Technology Studies at the Center for Critical Computational Studies (C³S), Goethe University Frankfurt. Her research focuses on the geopolitics of digital transformation, digital authoritarianism, data justice and ICTs for development. She directs the Surveillance Studies Network, founded the Surveillance in the Majority World Research Network, and serves as associate editor for the journal Surveillance & Society. Azadeh Akbari is a member of the EU AI Act Advisory Forum, regularly appears on international media and advises policymakers on surveillance and digital repression.

Chris Andersen
University of Alberta

Chris Andersen, PhD, is Vice Provost and Dean of the College of Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Alberta. An Indigenous scholar, his research examines classification, statistical power, indigenous data sovereignty and the politics of recognition. He is lead author of Indigenous Statistics: From Data Deficits to Data Sovereignty (Routledge, 2025) and author of Métis: Race, Recognition, and the Struggle for Indigenous Peoplehood (UBC Press, 2014). From 2010 to 2018, he served on Statistics Canada’s Advisory Committee on Social Conditions. He is currently a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research's Boundaries, Membership and Belonging programme.

Aline Blankertz
Structural Integrity

Aline Blankertz is an applied economist and co-founder of the digital policy collective Structural Integrity. Her work focuses on digital markets, critical analysis of technologies and transforming platforms to serve the public interest. She has worked at various NGOs, including Rebalance Now, interface, Wikimedia Deutschland and SINE Foundation and spent the first years of her professional life at an economics consultancy to manage projects for large corporations.

Georg Glasze
FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg

Georg Glasze is Professor of Cultural and Political Geography at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), where he leads the research group on Cultural, Political and Digital Geographies. His research lies at the intersection of political and digital geography, with a particular focus on digital sovereignty, digital infrastructures and geodatafication. He has published critical work on the historical emergence and contested spatialities of digital sovereignty and is lead editor of The Elgar Companion to the Geopolitics of Digital Sovereignty (2026). He also studies open geodata, OpenStreetMap, digital commons as alternative ways of organising digital infrastructure and the intersection between digital transformation and human rights.

Berna Akcali Gur
Queen Mary University of London

Dr Berna Akcali Gur is an international law and technology scholar at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London, where she convenes the Outer Space Law module and is affiliated with the Legal Tech Research Institute. She is also an Associate Research Fellow in the Digital Governance Cluster at the United Nations University-CRIS and chairs the IISL Working Group on the Interplanetary Internet. Her research examines the public international, trade and EU law implications of advancements in information and communication technologies, focusing on how evolving space-based ICT infrastructures reshape global digital and outer space governance.

Julia Hess
Interface

Julia Christina Hess leads interface's work on semiconductors through the Global Chip Dynamics Programme. Her research examines the strategic importance of semiconductors for Europe and the global, interdependent value chain, considering both ecological footprint and geopolitical context. She currently focuses on strengthening international government partnerships and the proposed EU Tech Sovereignty Package. An expert on semiconductor policy, from industrial strategy to chip diplomacy, Julia has spoken at conferences, events and hearings, most recently as a subject matter expert during New York Climate Week and before the European Parliament's Committee on Industry, Research and Energy. She is regularly interviewed by Die Zeit, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Politico, Deutschlandfunk, Internationale Politik and IPG Journal.

Salma Jalife
Centro México Digital

MSc Salma Jalife is President of Centro México Digital (Mexican Think Tank) and the first woman to receive Mexico's National Engineering Award (2023). A computer engineer and telecommunications specialist from UNAM and the University of Colorado at Boulder, she boasts 35 years of global ICT consulting experience including the transformation of Telecommunications Ministries in Colombia and Costa Rica.
She has served as Mexico's Undersecretary of Communications and as a Federal Telecommunications Commissioner. Recognized by Forbes as a top AI expert in government, she leads key digital development indexes, academic networks, impact studies on the adoption of AI in the Mexican economy and initiatives focused on people-centric digital transformation.

Min Jiang
UNC Charlotte

Dr Min Jiang is Professor of Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and Non-resident Scholar at New America. She is a Secretariat member of the Chinese Internet Research Conference (CIRC) and Vice Chair of the Communication Law and Policy Division of the International Communication Association (ICA). Her work lies at the intersections of digital technology, geopolitics and policy with a focus on China and the Global South. She co-edited three special journal issues and published over 40 journal articles and chapters. She is lead editor of Digital Sovereignty in the BRICS Countries (Cambridge University Press, 2025) and US-China Power Play (Michigan State University Press, forthcoming).

Shyam Krishnakumar
The Pranava Institute

Shyam Krishnakumar is Executive Director and co-founder of The Pranava Institute (TPI), a New Delhi-based think tank that works at the intersection of emerging technology, public policy, society and design to build sustainable technological futures. At TPI, Shyam's research engages with key regulatory and geopolitical questions around emerging technology including projects on India's semiconductor ecosystem, Advancing EU-India Technology Cooperation and responsible AI deployment in the public sector. Shyam is also an AI and Market Power Fellow with the European Artificial Intelligence and Society Fund. He holds a Bachelor's in Computer Science and a Master's in Political Science and International Relations.

Marc Lendermann
Federal Ministry for Digital Transformation and Government Modernisation

Marc Lendermann is the head of the division for bilateral digital policy in the German Federal Ministry for Digital Transformation and Government Modernization, leading a team in charge of cooperation with other countries in the area of digital policy. Prior to this, he has been seconded to Germany’s consulate general in San Francisco, acting as a liaison officer to Silicon Valley. Previously, he held positions in the Federal Chancellery, at Germany’s permanent representation to the European Union in Brussels and in the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs. He has trained as a lawyer and holds degrees including a doctorate from universities in Germany and in France.

Frida Mwangi
Kenya Union of Gig Workers

Frida Mwangi is a Kenyan labor rights advocate and policy reformer. As National Chairperson of the Kenya Union of Gig Workers (KUGWO), she works to institutionalise protections for Kenya's workforce. Her rise, from freelance transcriber on Upwork to global advocate, reflects her commitment to fair pay and sustainable careers. She campaigns against arbitrary account deactivations, absent human review and sub-poverty pay for Kenyan workers, while challenging policies favoring multinational tech firms over local workers. She has worked with organizations worldwide to advance decent work and social protection for gig workers, believing platform workers can unite by defying their work's designed fragmentation.

Liv Marte Nordhaug
Digital Public Goods Alliance

Liv spearheaded the creation and launch of the Digital Public Goods Alliance in 2019 and served as its co-lead from 2020-2023. In her role, she leverages 15 years of experience with the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad). There, she worked on country capacity building and served as an advisor to the Director General, before leading several digital innovation projects built around open-source technologies. Before starting at Norad, Liv lived for two years in Timor-Leste, where she conducted field research and worked as an advisor on good governance and human resource development to the Timorese public petroleum sector administration.

Cynthia Picolo
Laboratory of Public Policy and Internet

Cynthia Picolo is the Executive Director of the Laboratory of Public Policy and Internet (LAPIN). She holds a Master's in Public International Law from Leiden University and is a member of UNESCO's AI Ethics Experts Without Borders, specializing in Privacy, Data Protection, and AI (Academy of European Law; Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam). She participates in working groups and committees including the Rights in Network Coalition, Brazil's Data Governance Committee, CGI.br, IEEE 7007.1 and the Public Defender's Office AI and Human Rights research group. She is experienced in multilateral forums (G20, OAS, BRICS, UN/UNFCCC-COP) and served as a UNESCO consultant on AI ethics readiness assessment in Brazil.

Julia Pohle
Centre Marc Bloch

Julia Pohle is Deputy Director of the Centre Marc Bloch, a Franco-German research institute in Berlin, as well as project lead at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center and an associate researcher at the Brussels School of Governance and CNRS Centre Internet et Société in Paris. Her research focuses on actors, institutions and debates in the field of global digital governance and European digital policy. She is academic editor of Internet Policy Review and regularly advises policy actors on international digital policy issues. She currently leads a pool of experts working on digital sovereignty for the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission.

Kave Salamatian
University of Savoie

Kave Salamatian is a full professor of computer science at the University of Savoie. He earned his PhD in 1998 from Paris SUD-Orsay, working on joint source-channel coding for multimedia over the Internet and developing one of the first Internet videoconferencing prototypes. He holds an MBA, worked as a market-floor risk analyst and modelled urban traffic. His research spans Internet measurement, network security and networking information theory, and he pioneered the "Geopolitics of Cyberspace." A distinguished visiting professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and recipient of its Presidential Award, he now holds the MIAI (Artificial Cluster at Grenoble) chair on AI applications to business and administrative processes. He has published more than 200 papers.

Niels ten Oever
University of Amsterdam

Niels is an Assistant Professor in the Department of European Studies and Co-Principal Investigator of the critical infrastructure lab at the University of Amsterdam. His research examines communication infrastructures through the lenses of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and International Political Economy (IPE), tracing their evolution from the telegraph to the internet, contemporary submarine cables, and satellite networks. Niels serves on the advisory boards of the Amsterdam School for Regional, Transnational and European Studies and the German inter-university project AI Infrastructures for Sovereignty and Self-Determination, and coordinates the Tech, Power, and Policy theme group at the Amsterdam Centre for European Studies.