CyberBRICS

Natalia Couto

Natália Couto holds a PhD and a Master’s degree in Regulatory Law from the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV Direito Rio). She studied for an LLM in Law, Innovation and Technology at FGV Direito Rio, where she also worked as a teaching assistant. She specializes in contracts and compliance and has a postgraduate degree from the … Read more

Germano Paulo Johansson Neto

Germano Johansson holds a bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering and two master’s degrees from the University of Southern California, one in Infrastructure and the other in Public Policy and Planning. Since 2019, he has specialized in internet governance and digital sovereignty. He currently serves as a parliamentary advisor in Brazil’s Federal Senate. Germano is currently … Read more

Breno Pauli Medeiros

CyberBRICS Researcher. Breno Pauli Medeiros holds a PhD in Military Sciences from the Brazilian Army Command and General Staff College (ECEME), Rio de Janeiro, where he also works as a Post Doctoral Researcher.Breno’s research focus revolves around examining the impacts of cyber power and its multifaceted applications within contemporary policy and institutional frameworks. He has … Read more

Danil Kerimi

Danil Kerimi is an experienced technology and public relations executive with a track record of delivering impactful projects in corporate strategy, national, urban and corporate digital transformation, emerging tech, economic and municipal diplomacy in developed, emerging and frontier markets. Currently, Mr. Kerimi serves on the boards of World Smart Sustainable Cities Organization (Seoul), World Intellectual … Read more

Amrita Sengupta

Amrita Sengupta is a Research and Programme Lead at the Centre for Internet and Society, India, where she focuses on research at the intersection of technology and society.  Her research interests and work lie in the areas of gender and technology, digital cultures, ethics in research methods, digital access, algorithmic biases and tech design, AI … Read more

Alexander Ignatov

Alexander Ignatov possesses PhD in Political Science and currently holding the position of a researcher at the Center for International Institutions Research, RANEPA (Moscow). In his research Alexander focuses on global governance issues, multilateral forums agenda (G20, BRICS), and recent trends in the Internet governance system development. With more than 30 research pieces presented up … Read more

nombulelo Faith Lekota

Nombulelo Faith Lekota is a CyberBRICS researcher with a Master’s in Information Technology from the University of Pretoria and is currently pursuing a PhD in Computer Science at the University of Johannesburg. Her research focuses on ICT Data Governance, Architecture, Cybersecurity frameworks, and best practice standards. With 20 years of experience in the IT industry, … Read more

Mila Samdub

Mila T Samdub is a researcher working on state digital infrastructures and techno-illiberalism in India. He is currently a resident fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. He previously worked as a curator at Khoj International Artists’ Association in New Delhi, where his practice focused on the intersections of art, activism and … Read more

Viviane Farias

Viviane Farias is Ph.D. in System Engineering and Computer Science at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and works as a Data and Analytics Governance Specialist at Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV). She is postdoctoral research fellow at Center for Technology and Society (FGV Law School). She received her master’s degree in computer engineering … Read more

Alexandre Costa Barbosa

Alexandre Costa Barbosa is a digital policy consultant, associate researcher at the Weizenbaum Institute and a CyberBRICS fellow. He was an expert advisor to the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee – CGI.br and the Brazilian Internet Governance School. Previously, Costa Barbosa was a senior innovation researcher at the Institute for Technology and Society of Rio de … Read more

Jai Vipra

Jai Vipra is an AI policy researcher with over 8 years of experience in technology policy. She has previously worked at the AI Now Institute, the Centre for the Governance of AI, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, IT for Change, and the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy. Jai’s areas of interest are the … Read more

Aifang Ma

Dr. Aifang Ma is currently a Boya Postdoctoral Scholar and a Lecturer at the School of Journalism and Communication, Peking University. She obtained her Ph.D in political science at Sciences Po Paris in 2022. She works on the regulation of the digital economy, the antitrust regulation of tech giants, and artificial intelligence. She currently spearheads … Read more

Bruna Franqueira

CyberBRICS Researcher. Researcher at CTS-FGV, and Masters candidate in Theory of the State and Constitutional Law at PUC-Rio, where she’s also part of the Editorial Committee of the “Direito, Estado e Sociedade” Journal, acting as assisting editor. Her research aims to comprehend the Policies for Digital Transformation of Education from the proposals of Paulo Freire. Lawyer, working with data protection and privacy.

Erica Bakonyi

CyberBRICS Researcher. Lawyer and DPO-as-a-service, with experience in projects of compliance with privacy and data protection legislation for the consulting companies “Arquitetura Educacional” and “Macher Tecnologia”. Researcher at FGV Direito Rio, at the Center for Technology and Society (CTS). Mentor in the data protection area (“LGPD and Compliance”) at AB2L. Co-coordinator of MyData BR and Legal Hackers Rio. Master in Public and European International Law from Coimbra University. Specialist in “Tenders and Administrative Contracts”. MBA in Information Security Management (in progress), at Infinet.

Eduardo Mattos

CyberBRICS Assistant Researcher. Graduate student in International Relations at UFRJ. Researcher at Laboratório de Estudos de Mídia e Relações Internacionais, focusing on the intersections between culture, media, and IR. Former exchange student at the Universidad de Santiago de Chile (2020) through the ESCALA Exchange Programme of the Asociación de Universidades Grupo Montevideo. Former participant of the extension project “CCS em Faces” at the Centro de Ciências da Saúde/UFRJ. 

Shilpa Singh Jaswant

CyberBRICS Visiting Professor. Shilpa Singh Jaswant is currently an Assistant Professor at Jindal Global Law school, O P Jindal Global Law University, India. She can be reached at ssjaswant@jgu.edu.in.

She completed B.Sc. LLB. (Hons) from Gujarat National Law University in 2017. She was awarded the DAAD Scholarship in 2017-18, financed by the European Union, to pursue LLM in European law at the Europa Kolleg- University of Hamburg. Her LLM thesis was published as a Study paper and awarded as the best research. 

Prior to teaching at Jindal, she worked as a competition lawyer in Germany and India. Her teaching and research focus at the intersection of law, trade and technology. She writes and researches on decentralised systems, data governance and digital privacy. Her work involves issues regarding constitutional principles, governance systems, and dispute resolution systems.

Her work has appeared in International Review of Law, Computers & Technology, Kluwer Competition law blog, Kluwer Arbitration law blog, Oxford International organisation.

Wei Wang

Wei Wang

CyberBRICS Fellow. Wayne Wei Wang is now a PhD Candidate in Computational Legal Studies at the University of Hong Kong. Trained in Engineering and Law, Wayne focuses his research interests on IP & IT Law, Innovation Policy, particularly by means of data science methods. He engages as an Administrative Officer for Creative Commons Hong Kong Chapter. Wayne (has) held the fellowship of DERN/GSAN Resilience Scholar at University of Essex, funded by Global Challenges Research Fund of UK Research and Innovation. As Research Sprint Fellow at the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG) in Berlin, Wayne has been participating in the interdisciplinary scientific project – “Ethics of Digitalisation”, launched by the President of Germany and conducted by Global Network of Internet and Society Research Centers.

Prior to his PhD studies, Wayne recently completed the WIPO/QUT LLM in Intellectual Property with Dean’s Scholarship in Australia and worked as Data Analyst of IP litigations at a legal tech start-up in Shenzhen as well as Research Associate at Law and Technology Centre, HKU. He also received BEng, LLB and MPhil from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (China).

Smriti Parsheera

CyberBRICS Fellow. Smriti Parsheera is a Fellow at the National Institute of Public Finance & Policy, New Delhi, where she focuses on technology policy research. Her areas of interest include privacy and digital rights, regulatory governance and competition policy. She is one of the authors of the book “Responsible AI: A Global Policy Framework”.    She has previously worked as a member of the research secretariat for the Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission and held research positions with the Competition Commission of India and the United Nations Development Programme.   Smriti graduated from the National Law School of India University, Bangalore and obtained her LLM from the University of Pennsylvania along with a Certificate in Law and Business from the Wharton School. She is currently pursuing a PhD in policy studies from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

Senka Hadzic

CyberBRICS Fellow. Dr Senka Hadzic is a Senior Fellow at Research ICT Africa, where she was a Ford/Media Democracy Fund Tech Exchange fellow from 2018-2019 working on alternative spectrum policies to enable small scale operators and community networks. She is also affiliated with the ICT for Development Centre at the University of Cape Town where she was a postdoctoral fellow from 2016-2018. Her expertise is in low cost connectivity solutions in the Global South. In early 2020 she was awarded the Digital Futures fellowship from Hivos to research ownership models and sustainability of community networks. Dr Hadzic completed her PhD in Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering at the University of Aveiro (Portugal) in early 2014 and since then she has been working at the intersection of technology, design and policy.

Larissa Galdino

CyberBRICS Fellow. Larissa is Ph.D. in Political Science at the State University of Campinas, and analyzed the open government in the city of São Paulo. She was a researcher under the International Affairs Canada Award scholarship to participate in the Future Leaders in the Americas Program (“PFLA”), while she started to get interested working in the analyzing public policy development rooted in technology and data. Larissa became a member of the Social Science and Humanities Council of Canada and a young professional, an intern at Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Getúlio Vargas Foundation (“FGV”) in the School of Social Sciences. Also, she is Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Global Cities Program at the Institute of Advanced Studies, University of São Paulo (“USP”).

Larissa accumulated activities as a visiting researcher at the Université de Montréal, postdoctoral fellowship in Political Sociology about the Rio Doce Basin Rehabilitation and Environmental Disasters, a fellow of the Organization of American States’ Cyber South School on Internet Governance. Plus, she published three chapters of international books, six publications and made more than 16 presentations and international conferences. Currently, she is researching data governance ecosystems, smart cities, socio-digital inequalities, and computational social sciences.

Giullia Marques

Giullia Marques

CyberBRICS Assistant Researcher. Bachelor in International Relations (PUC – Rio) and currently a Master’s student in Sociology & Anthropology at the Institute of Philosophy and Social Sciences (IFCS) at UFRJ. Has experience as a research assistant in the area of public policies, having done scientific initiation at the Núcleo de Pesquisa em Desenvolvimento (NPD – PUC Rio). Currently a volunteer coder at the “COVID-19 Response Tracker” (OxCGRT) of the Blavatnik School of Government, for Oxford University and part of “Laboratório de Estudos Digitais” (LED – UFRJ) as a researcher of digital imagery mediation in the context of international conflicts. With multidisciplinary research interests, has already worked in the following themes: urban studies, family planning programs and the aesthetics of conflict.

Walter B. Gaspar

Walter Britto Gaspar
Walter Britto Gaspar

CyberBRICS Manager. Lawyer, graduated Law at FGV in 2015. Master in Public Health from UERJ (2017), studying the interface between innovation, intellectual property and access to medicines policies in Brazil. Grantee of the Fundación Botín Programme for the Public Interest in Latin America (2013). Researcher in the Fiocruz and Shuttleworth Foundation project on intellectual property and access to medicines (2017). National Coordinator of the NGO Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (2013-2016). Certified Graphic Designer from the Istituto Europeo di Design (2018). Author of “O que é Creative Commons? Novos modelos de direito autoral em um mundo mais criativo“. Currently, researcher in the CyberBRICS project at FGV’s Center for Technology and Society and Ph.D. student at UFRJ.

Luca Belli

Luca Belli | CyberBRICS

Director of CyberBRICS. Luca Belli, PhD, is Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) Law School, where he heads the Center for Technology and Society and the CyberBRICS project, and associated researcher at Centre de Droit Public Comparé of Paris 2 University. Luca is also Member of the Board of the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI), Director of CPDP LatAm and member of the CPDP Programme committee.

Before joining FGV, Luca worked as an agent for the Council of Europe Internet Governance Unit and served as a Network Neutrality Expert for the Council of Europe. Over the past decade, Luca has authored and edited more than 30 research outputs in English, French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish, amongst which “De la gouvernance à la régulation de l’Internet” (Berger-Levrault, 2016); the “Net Neutrality Compendium” (Springer, 2016); “Platform Regulations: How Platforms are Regulated and How They Regulate Us” (FGV, 2017) and “Gobernanza y Regulaciones de Internet en América Latina” (FGV, 2018); the “Community Network Manual” (FGV-ITU-ISOC, 2018); and “CyberBRICS: Cybersecurity Regulations in the BRICS Countries” (Springer-Nature 2021).

Luca’s works have been i.a. quoted by the Organization of American States Report on Freedom of Expression and the Internet (2013); used by the CoE to elaborate the Recommendation of the Committee of Ministers on Network Neutrality (2016); featured in the French Telecoms Regulator (ARCEP) Report on the State of the Internet (2018); used by the Brazilian Telecom Regulator (ANATEL) to define community networks (2020); and published or quoted by various media outlets, and published or quoted by various media outlets, including The Economist, Financial Times, Forbes, Le Monde, BBC, The Hill, China Today, O Globo, El Pais, and La Stampa.

Luca can be found on LinkedIn and on Twitter

A list of Luca’s publications can be found at http://lattes.cnpq.br/3521741614966236

Ian Brown

Ian Brown
Ian Brown
Ian Brown

CyberBRICS Visiting Professor. Ian Brown is Senior Fellow with Research ICT Africa’s Digital Policy Programme, where he is researching cyber-security, data protection, and human rights policy in Africa. He was previously Principal Scientific Officer at the UK government’s Department for Digital Culture, Media and Sport; Professor of Information Security and Privacy at the University of Oxford; and a Knowledge Exchange Fellow with the Commonwealth Secretariat and UK National Crime Agency. His academic publications include Regulating Code (2013, MIT Press, with Christopher T. Marsden) and Research Handbook on Governance of the Internet (2013, Edward Elgar).

Andrey A. Shcherbovich

Andrey Shcherbovich

CyberBRICS Visiting Professor. Andrey A. Shcherbovich is Associate professor at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, Faculty of Law (Department of Constitutional and Municipal Law), in Moscow, Russia. His professional Interests include Internet Governance; Constitutional Law; Human Rights; International Public Law and Procedure; Information Law; International Organizations; United Nations.

Andrey graduated from the National Research University Higher School of Economics, Faculty of Law (Department of International Law) in 2008 and completed Postgraduate studies at the National Research University – Higher School of Economics (Moscow, Russia); Faculty of Law (Department of Constitutional and Municipal Law) at 2011.

Sagwadi Mabunda

Sagwadi Mabunda | CyberBRICS Non-Resident Fellow
Sagwadi Mabunda | CyberBRICS Non-Resident Fellow
Sagwadi Mabunda | CyberBRICS Non-Resident Fellow

CyberBRICS Non-Resident Fellow.

Sagwadi Mabunda is a PhD Candidate at the University of the Western Cape. Her Doctoral thesis investigates the legislative responses of Cybercrime by analysing and critiquing the South African Cybercrimes Bill. She is a prolific speaker who has presented papers in a numerous conferences both in South Africa and internationally (Italy, Germany, Namibia and Botswana). She has published a number papers on her research interests which include Cybercrime and economic crimes such as International Anti-Money Laundering Law and International Anti-Corruption Law.

She has been invited to be a guest lecturer at the University of the Western Cape on the topic of Cyber Money Laundering. She has also successfully organised the first Economic Crime and Cybercrime Conference (ECCC) hosted at the University of the Western Cape in collaboration with the Journal of Anti-Corruption Law (JACL).

In 2018 at age 25, Sagwadi was honoured as one of Mail & Guardian’s 200 Young South Africans.

Anja Kovacs

Anja Kovacs | CyberbRICS Non-Resident Fellow
Anja Kovacs | CyberbRICS Non-Resident Fellow
Anja Kovacs | CyberbRICS Non-Resident Fellow

CyberBRICS Non-resident Fellow.

Dr. Anja Kovacs directs the Internet Democracy Project in India, which works towards an Internet that supports freedom of expression, democracy and social justice, in India and beyond. Her research currently focuses on questions regarding cybersecurity, surveillance and privacy, and regarding freedom of expression, including work on gender, surveillance, bodies and dataveillance and gender and online abuse.

She has also worked as an international consultant on Internet issues, including for the Independent Commission on Multilateralism, the United Nations Development Programme Asia Pacific, and the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression. She has lectured at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, and Ambedkar University, Delhi, India, as well as having been a Fellow at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India, and has conducted extensive fieldwork throughout South Asia. Dr. Kovacs obtained her PhD in Development Studies from the University of East Anglia in the UK.

Min Jiang

CyberBRICS Visiting Professor. Min Jiang (Ph.D.) is Associate Professor of Communication at UNC Charlotte, a secretariat member of the annual international Chinese Internet Research Conference (CIRC) and Associate Editor at Sage journal Communication & The Public.

Her research focuses on Chinese Internet technologies (search engine, social media, big data), politics (digital activism, online political satire, diplomacy), business (Chinese Internet giants, business ethics), and policies (real name registration, privacy).

She has co-edited 3 special journal issues and published over 30 journal articles and book chapters on the Chinese Internet, some of which have appeared in Journal of Communication, New Media & Society, Information, Communication & Society, International Journal of Communication, International Communication Gazette, and Policy & Internet. Media outlets including Reuters, Deutsche Welle, Foreign Policy, Financial Times, The New Scientist, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Al Jazeera English have interviewed her for her work.

She was born and raised in China. Prior to pursuing her doctor’s degree in the U.S., she had worked at China Central Television (CCTV) and Kill Bill I in her native country China. Dr. Jiang received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Beijing Foreign Studies University and her Ph.D. from Purdue University.