Digital Sovereignty for people and the planet: how to get there?

Dr Mohammad Amir Anwar

Senior Lecturer in African Studies and International Development at University of Edinburgh

• Work Futures: Edinburgh Futures Institute.
• Contemporary Issues in International Development: School of Social and Political Science.
• Research Design and Practice: School of Social and Political Science.

As a testament to his teaching excellence, he has been awarded the Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (UK).

He is also a Senior Research Fellow (Honorary) at the British Institute for Eastern Africa and Senior Research Associate at the  University of Johannesburg. He was a Fellow of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Digital Economy and Society. 

He holds a Ph.D in Geography from Trinity College Dublin. He has extensive experience of conducting research both in India and Africa.

His previous employment include: Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford and the University of Johannesburg. He also briefly worked as a Research Assistant at Trinity College Dublin, for an Irish Research Council funded project on the role of information and communication technologies in enterprise development and industrial change in Africa.

He is the author of 'The Digital Continent', (2022) published by Oxford University Press. He has 20 peer-reviewed publications including highly-reputed journals, such as Environment and Planning A, Competition and Change, Globalizations, Review of African Political Economy, Journal of Modern African Studies, Gender and Development, Canadian Journal of Development Studies, International Labour Review, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, First Monday, and Urban Forum. Peer-reviewed book chapters have been published by Sage, Routledge, and Cambridge University Press. He regularly contributes to public debate through blogs, articles for online news sources, and radio interviews. 

Mohammad has received funding the Leverhulme Trust, Royal Society of Edinburgh, British Academy, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Foundation of Urban and Regional Studies. His PhD was funded through Trinity Research Studentship, Trinity College, University of Dublin.

Dr Carla Bonina

Associate Professor (Reader) in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at University of Surrey

Her work has informed international organizations, governments, and donors—including the World Bank, the OECD, the IDRC, Avinas Americas and others—on strategic issues such as digital transformation, open data, and the sustainability of the digital economy. Renowned for her expertise in Latin America, Carla is a thought leader in using digital technology for social impact.

Carla’s research, funded by prestigious bodies like the EU’s Horizon 2020, ESRC, and EPSRC, translates cutting-edge insights into actionable solutions. She has been recognized with numerous accolades, including Mid-Career Researcher of the Year at Surrey Business School (2021) and the Impact Award (2020) for her outstanding contributions to digital government transformation in Latin America.

As a founding member of the Surrey Center of Digital Economy, Principal Researcher at the Latin American Open Data Initiative (ILDA), and Fellow at the Surrey Institute for People Centred AI, Carla is at the forefront of driving responsible AI adoption and digital innovation. She also contributes to the Center for Social Innovation Management, the Surrey Law and Technology Hub, and the global Sandbox network of young entrepreneurs.

Carla holds a PhD in Management from the London School of Economics, an MSc in Public Administration and Public Policy from CIDE, and a BA in Economics from the University of Buenos Aires. Passionate about social entrepreneurship, Carla thrives on turning research into insights that enable impactful change for a more sustainable digital future.

Dr. Matthew Cole

Assistant Professor in Technology, Work and Employment at University of Sussex

Matt is originally from upstate New York, though has lived in London since 2010. Trade-unionism has been an integral part of his politics and he has been actively involved in the labour movement for over fifteen years. He has been published in Tribune, Novara, Vice, Open Democracy, The Independent, Salvage, and in various academic journals.

Prof. Paolo Gerbaudo

Senior Research Fellow in Social Sciences with the Talento Investigador programme of the Autonomous Community of Madrid in the department of Political History, Theories and Geography at the Faculty of Political Sciences and Sociology of Complutense Univer at Universidad Complutense de Madrid

He has a PhD from the Media and Communications department, Goldsmiths College, University of London, with a thesis on the relationship between communication and space in social movements. He is the author of four monographs Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism (Pluto, 2012), The Mask and the Flag: Populism, Citizenism and Global Protest (Hurst/OUP, 2017), The Digital Party: Political Organization and Online Democracy (Pluto, 2019) and The Great Recoil: Politics After Populism and Pandemic (Verso, 2021) and has published articles in different academic journals specialized in political science, sociology and communication sciences, such as New Media and Society, Social Movement Studies, Information, Communication and Society, Media, Culture and Society, Social Media and Society, Party Politics and Youth Studies. In addition, his work has appeared in different Spanish and international media, including El País, La Vanguardia, The Guardian, The New Statesman, The Nation, BBC World Service, BBC World, Foreign Policy and Al Jazeera. His main lines of research are the relationship between communication technologies and political organization, populism as a discursive and mobilization logic, the stories and identities of contemporary social movements, the transformation of political parties and the return of state interventionism.

Dr Fausto Gernone

PhD Candidate at IIPP, UCL

Under the supervision of Antonio Andreoni and Mariana Mazzucato, I am completing a PhD at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. My research explores the dynamics of competition between complementary products in the context of digital ecosystems, investigating the role of coordination devices like industry standards, APIs, and open-access initiatives.

Prior to and during my PhD I have been working in the field of competition policy and industrial policy for various years, advising both firms and governments on issues regarding innovation policy, Intellectual Property Regulation, Standard Essential Patents, antitrust and coordination, mergers and State aid.

My academic background includes an MSc from the London School of Economics and a BSc in Econometrics from the University of Nottingham.

Assoc Prof. Edemilson Paraná

Associate Professor in the Department of Social Sciences at LUT University

He has previously taught at the University of Brasília and the Federal University of Ceará in Brazil and held research fellowships at the Institute of Applied Economic Research (IPEA, Brazil) and the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research and Data (WISERD), Cardiff University.

Edemilson has lectured and published extensively in the areas of Political Economy, Economic Sociology, and Social Theory. His research interests include the Digital Economy, Digital Finance, Financialisation, and the Political Economy of Artificial Intelligence. His academic work has been published in Big Data & Society, New Political Economy, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Globalizations, Platforms & Society, among others.

Lecturer Roser Pujadas

Lecturer in Digital Innovation at STEaPP, UCL

Her most current research addresses the so-called API economy, and the distributed algorithmic infrastructures underlying matchmaking platforms. Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and the embeddedness of AI in these infrastructures raise questions around data and algorithmic governance, automated decision-making, algorithmic interaction, and new forms of value capture.

Her research has informed policy in the UK on the challenges that digital innovation poses to privacy, and has been published and presented in Information Systems, Innovation Studies, Organisation Studies, Management, and Science and Technology Studies outlets.

She holds a PhD in Information Systems from the London School of Economics, where she worked as LSE Fellow and Research Fellow.

At STEaPP she teaches courses on Digital Rights, Digital Technology and Policy, and Technological and Social Innovation.

Assoc Prof. Cecilia Rikap

Head of Research and Associate Professor in Economics at UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose at IIPP, UCL

Cecilia’s research is rooted in the international political economy of science and technology and the economics of innovation. She currently studies the rising concentration of intangible assets leading to the emergence of intellectual monopolies, among others from digital and pharma industries, the distribution of intellectual (including data) rents, resulting geopolitical tensions and the effects of knowledge assetization on the knowledge commons and development. She has published two books on these topics. 1) “Capitalism, Power and Innovation: Intellectual Monopoly Capitalism uncovered” (Routledge), recently won the EAEPE Joan Robinson Prize Competition. 2) “The Digital Innovation Race: Conceptualizing the Emerging New World Order” (Palgrave), co-authored with B.A.K. Lundvall, focuses on the artificial intelligence race and clashes of power between the US and Chinese Big Tech, the US state and the Chinese states. Her recent work includes corporate planning of global production and innovation systems driven by intellectual monopolization and how these leading corporations, in particular tech giants, are developing state-like features, thus reshaping core and peripheral states.