OFA Symposium 2025: Open Technology Impact in Uncertain Times

Benedict Kingsbury’s broad, theoretically grounded approach to international law closely integrates work in legal theory, political theory, and history. He delivered the Lauterpacht Lectures at Cambridge in November-December 2022 on International Law Futures, drawing from his current research on planetary and space law & governance issues, infrastructures as regulation, and global data law & AI. With the late Richard Stewart, he helped pioneer the field of Global Administrative Law; their most recent joint books are on Megaregulation (the TPP, 2019), and Global Hybrid and Private Governance (2023). Kingsbury has directed the Law School’s Institute for International Law and Justice since its founding in 2002, and is the Faculty Director of the Guarini Institute for Global Legal Studies and its Global Law & Tech initiative launched in 2018. He and NYU Professor José Alvarez served as the editors-in-chief of the century-old American Journal of International Law 2013-18. Kingsbury has written on a wide range of international law topics, from indigenous peoples issues to interstate & investor-state arbitration, indicators & rankings, infrastructure, and genetic sequence data. After completing his LLB with first-class honors at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand in 1981, Kingsbury was a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford. In 1984, he graduated at the top of his class in the MPhil program in international relations at Oxford. He subsequently completed a DPhil in law at Oxford and has taught at Oxford, Duke, Harvard, University of Tokyo, University of Paris 1, and University of Utah.

Cailean Osborne is a Senior Researcher at the Linux Foundation, where he conducts strategic research and advocacy for promoting openness in AI. He has a PhD in Social Data Science from the University of Oxford, where he researched collaboration dynamics in the open source AI ecosystem. During his PhD, he was a visiting researcher at the Open Source Software Data Analytics Lab at Peking University. Previously, he was the International Policy Lead at the UK Government's Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation, where he co-authored the UK's National AI Strategy and served as a UK Delegate at intergovernmental AI governance initiatives at the OECD and Council of Europe. He is based in Berlin, Germany.

Cassie Jiun Seo is a public-interest technology specialist focused on the sustainable use of technology in humanitarian, development, and migration nexus. She consults the World Health Organization on free and open-source solutions for epidemic preparedness, personal health records, and global interoperability of health credentials. Previously, she led the digital unit at the Norwegian Refugee Council, supporting large-scale humanitarian and emergency operations. She is an affiliate at the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at Cambridge University, where she researches technology practices in humanitarian contexts.

Ettore Maria is Professor of Private Law at the University of Florence School of Law and founder and managing partner of Studio legale Lombardi (priorly he was of counsel at DLA Piper and than at Hage-Chahine Law Firm). Ettore Maria is an expert in Economic Regulation from CUTS C-CIER (Jaipur, India), a DAAD alumnus (Germany), and a former Visiting Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute (Fiesole, Italy). He served two terms as Member of the Arbitro Bancario Finanziario appointed by the Bank of Italy (Bologna) and currently serves as President of the Supervisory Board on the “231 Model” at Nuovo Pignone Holding S.p.A., part of the Baker Hughes Company.
He has taught and conducted research at prestigious universities in the U.S., the U.K., and Germany. Ettore Maria is an attorney qualified in Italy and New York and actively involved in international legal associations, serving as Event Officer for the Harvard Law School Association of Europe and as a member of the Association Henry Capitant (Paris) and The London Centre for Commercial and Financial Law.
His prolific publication record includes six books with esteemed global publishers and over sixty articles in leading international law reviews. His notable works address consumer goods warranties, financial market regulation, digital innovation and intellectual property rights (Copyleft), contractual authority, and financial innovation. His latest publications include “Alternative Acquisition Models and Financial Innovation” (2023) and “Digitalization, Copyright and the Law” (2025), both published by Routledge.

I am Dr. Felipe Schmidt Fonseca, an experienced Berlin-based Brazilian advocate for social-environmental innovation and free/open-source technologies turned researcher. I am the founder of Reuse City studio and a co-creator of semente, a toolkit for community projects; as well as the co-founder and lead articulator of the Tropixel network; and an active member of organisations such as GIG and Circular Berlin.

Between 2019 and 2022, I was a Marie Curie Early Stage Research Fellow (Northumbria University / Mozilla Foundation). I have recently engaged in collaborations such as ID21, fonte.wiki, ALGO-BR, and CODE.

I have a PhD in Design from Northumbria University (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK). The title of my thesis successfully defended in September 2023 is "Generous cities – weaving commons-oriented systems for the reuse of excess materials in urban contexts". Before that, I got an MA in Scientific and Cultural Dissemination from Labjor at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in Brazil, acquired with a dissertation about networked experimental labs.

Gordon LaForge is a senior policy analyst at New America working on the geopolitics and governance of emerging technologies like AI, international institutions, and the future of democracy. He is also a visiting faculty member at Stanford University's Leadership Academy for Development and at Arizona State University's Thunderbird School of Global Management.

LaForge was previously senior researcher at Princeton University’s Innovations for Successful Societies program, where he wrote on institution-building in fragile states. He has been a freelance journalist in Southeast Asia, a researcher with the predictive analytics and geopolitical risk firm Predata Inc., and a graduate intern at the US Mission to NATO in Brussels working on nuclear policy planning in the Office of the Defense Advisor.

LaForge's analysis and reporting have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, Foreign Policy, The Washington Quarterly, The Daily Beast, The Diplomat, and other publications. He is a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and was awarded two Fulbright fellowships to Indonesia. He holds an MPA in international relations from Princeton University and a BA in literature from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

I'm interested in researching social aspects of modern technology collaboration in the context of open source software communities and participation. My research goals are to promote diversity and inclusion in open source software and other software development communities, facilitate welcoming and equitable online collaboration, and understand how personal identity impacts software use and development.

Ijeoma Onwuka is an experienced Community Manager with over 3 years of building thriving communities for tech startups and non-profits. She currently leads programs at Scandium Systems Limited, creating engaging spaces for developers, technical writers, and tech enthusiasts.

Passionate about open source, she actively contributes to projects like OpenSSF, DevRel Foundation, CHAOSS, and UNICEF, focusing on the intersection of technology and community.

Jan Krewer is a doctoral student at the Centre of Economics of the Sorbonne Paris North University. Jan’s research is financed by the National Association for Research in Technology (ANRT) under an Industrial Agreement for Research Training with the French development agency – the “Agence française de Développement” (AFD) Group. His work contributes to AFD’s multidisciplinary research department on commons and sustainable development.

Jan holds a master’s degree in international public management from Sciences Po Paris, where he studied political sciences. He previously served as an analyst and Deputy Secretary-General of the French Digital Council, contributing to the initial development of the Law for a Digital Republic. Jan lived in Senegal and Rwanda, where he joined the Smart Africa Alliance as a strategic advisor to work on pan-African data governance and the federation of digital identities. Most recently, he worked as a Senior Policy Analyst at Open Future, helping to develop a European strategic agenda for digital commons as part of the Next Generation Internet (NGI) Commons project. Jan Krewer’s research focuses on forms of collective ownership of technologies and their potential for the development of societies.

Dr Jennifer Barth is Chief Research Director at Symmetry (formerly Smoothmedia). She has more than 15 years of experience leading independent research on the intersections of emerging technologies and socioeconomic change. She provides companies with independent thought leadership and media engagement opportunities on global issues impacting and shaping our current and future socio-cultural lives.

Her work spans the digital through to social and economic change. Currently she is looking at sustainability, workforce skills and organizational competitiveness strategies through and beyond the pandemic with Microsoft and researching the role of open source software and its potential to fuel sustainable growth with OpenUK. She has experience working on the human impact of artificial intelligence (AI) through fieldwork experiments with IBM Watson and other providers, leading Digital Transformation research for Microsoft, Reinventing Loyalty with Adobe, and developing the Science of Common Ground for Heineken’s award-winning Open your World campaign. She is skilled at research design, qualitative research and analysis, quantitative analysis, new methods using emerging technologies and working with people to bring to life the stories behind numbers.

Dr Barth earned her DPhil in Geography from the University of Oxford.

Jennifer is an independent legal consultant and PhD Candidate (International Law x Computer Science) at the University of Cambridge as a World Ramsay Scholar. She researches global governance of open-source software. An experienced Australian public international lawyer, she has advised on a broad range of matters at the intersection of technology, human rights and policy, including for public and private sectors. She has worked as Senior Legal Advisor to the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, for leading international law firms and served on the International Law Association’s Global Board. Jennifer holds a LLM and BA/LLB (Hons.).

I am a Senior Research Associate at the University of Cambridge and a Group Leader at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB, Trieste, Italy) where I develop open technologies for engineering biology. I also research the potential for local, distributed biomanufacturing of enzymes to improve access to diagnostics and build capacity for biological research in the global South. I also co-founded four social enterprises and communities, working with collaborators in Africa, Latin America and beyond to build a open, sustainable and equitable global bioeconomy.

Senior Researcher at RISE Research Institutes of Sweden and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Lund University.

Jonathan Starr stands at the intersection of open source and open science. As the program manager of He drives work on The Map of Open Source Science and facilitates multiple long-duration “Innovation
Sprints”, tackling shared ecosystem-level challenges. As co-lead of SciOS and the Institute of Open
Science Practices, Jonathan designs and facilitates multiple global annual events and workshops
connecting technologists with researchers to develop numerous deep tech infrastructures enabling
open-by-design in research. Additionally, he consults on various projects designing novel publishing,
identifier, community, and incentive mechanisms for the scientific process. Burlington based.

Julieta Arancio is a social scientist based in Berlin, Germany, with a background in science and technology studies. She has been actively involved in the open science hardware movement since 2017 and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Open Science Hardware Foundation. Julieta holds a PhD in STS from Argentina and has conducted postdoctoral research at Drexel University (USA) and the University of Bath (UK). Today, she works as a Senior Advisor at the Open Research Community Accelerator (USA) in the intersection of open science, open-source technologies and science policy. She is also involved in open source infrastructure for research assessment reform at the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (Germany).

Kasia Odrozek works at the intersection of research, policy, and community engagement to help turn ideas into action in the ethical tech space. A strategist and AI ethics expert, she focuses on open and ethical datasets for AI, the emergence of artificial intimacy, identity shifts in human–AI interaction, and the broader concept of Public AI. She advises a range of organizations—from international institutions to grassroots initiatives—on responsible technology development and governance.

Kasia currently leads the Business Council at UNESCO, where she supports the implementation of the Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence. She brings a cross-sector perspective, translating high-level AI ethics principles into tangible commitments and practice.

Previously, she served as Director of Insights at the Mozilla Foundation, where she led research and policy efforts to advance Trustworthy AI and supported responsible tech initiatives. She has also advised public-interest funders, including the EU AI & Society Fund and the Prototype Fund.

Kasia’s background spans open-source and open-knowledge communities, having worked with Wikipedia on open culture and software, and tech entrepreneurship, where she led product strategy at the podcasting platform TapeWrite. She also founded the Berlin chapter of Zebras Unite, a network promoting ethical, inclusive alternatives to traditional startup models.

She holds qualifications in law, political science, and product management, and brings a multidisciplinary lens to complex challenges at the intersection of technology and society.

Senior researcher at CISL and principal investigator. Ph.D. from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Expert in FOSS and Digital commons.
CSIL's other participants in the research team are: Prof. Massimo Florio, D.sa Silvia Vignetti and D.sa. Martina Gazzo

Marco is a doctoral student at the University of Toronto and a Research Assistant with the Guarini Global Law & Tech team at NYU. He holds master's degrees from NYU (USA), Peking University (China), and the University of São Paulo (Brazil). Before joining UofT, Marco worked with various universities and policy think tanks internationally. His research focuses on the transnational regulation of emerging technologies, the agency of the Global South in shaping digital infrastructure, and the role of law in governing open-source environments.

Megan Forbes is the Program Manager for the Open Source Programs Office at Johns Hopkins University, working to promote the use of open-source software on campus for research, education, and translation. She has twenty years of experience working with open-source software, museum collections, and collections technology. Previously, Megan served as the co-Director of the It Takes a Village project, the Program Manager and Product Owner for CollectionSpace, and the Director of the Collection at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York. Megan holds a MA in Library and Information Studies from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Nathalia Foditsch is Director of International Programs at Connect Humanity. She is a licensed attorney and an expert in technology and communications policy and regulatory issues, with over fifteen years experience.

She has worked for some of the main international organizations and think tanks in Washington D.C., which she has represented in countless official missions to numerous countries in the Latin America, Caribbean, and Europe.

More recently, Foditsch has served as a Senior Policy and Regulatory specialist for the Web Foundation’s Alliance for Affordable Internet. She is a research fellow at Cornell University’s Emerging Markets Institute (EMI), which is part of the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management.

Among other publications focused on technology and communications policy and regulation, Foditsch has co-edited and co-authored the book “Broadband in Brazil: Past, Present, Future”, which was a finalist of the 2017 “Jabuti Awards” (the main literary award in Brazil). She is an adjunct professor at the University Jose Cela (Spain); and holds a master’s in law (LLM) and a master’s in public policy (MPP) and is a member of the advisory board of the Brazil-U.S. Legal and Judicial Studies Program at the Washington College of Law (WCL).

She is fluent in Portuguese, English, Spanish, and German.

Nicholas (Nick‘) Gates is a Senior Policy Advisor at OpenForum Europe (OFE), where he works on research and advocacy related to open source software and other open technologies. Nick leads the organisation's research efforts, including the OpenForum Academy (OFA) Symposium, its annual research conference. He also leads OFE’s advocacy work on the NGI Commons and European Open Source Academy initiatives, which are focused on digital commons and public recognition of open source in Europe.

Nick's expertise is in open source in the public sector, open source for social good, and the funding and sustainability of the open source ecosystem. His background is in digital government policy and research, particularly on open source but also public financial management, and digital service delivery. He enjoys supporting development partners, governments, and international organisations to deliver on their agendas through applied policymaking and research.

Before joining OFE, Nick helped launch ODI Global's Digital Public Finance Hub, a new learning initiative around the digital transformation of public finance, as a consultant at Public Digital. He began his career working on research, policy, and advocacy at the Digital Impact Alliance — conducting research on topics including national digital transformation processes, open source in government, and digital transformation policy — and was a Fellow at the Portulans Institute.

Nick holds an undergraduate dual degree from the University of Massachusetts Lowell in Political Science and History, and graduated with an MSc in Global Development from the University of Copenhagen in 2018.

Legal Researcher at the Centre for Internet and Society, CNRS, working on legal strategies for open data and data commons.

Raphaël is a political analyst and public innovation expert with 20+ years of experience across more than 20 countries. He leads ECDPM’s work on Brazil’s digital public infrastructure and has co-authored recent reports on tech sovereignty and open-source governance. He is also currently working on a broad mapping of national and regional DPIs in the East Africa Community. A fluent Portuguese speaker and 2024 graduate of the AI4GOV Master’s in Artificial Intelligence for Public Services, he also lectures at Sciences Po Paris on “Open Government and Democratic Innovations in the Age of AI.” Raphaël was France’s national lead with Democratic Society for climate policy design under the NetZeroCities action framework. He is also the co-founder of Plurall.cc (Paris-Kigali) a consultancy collective that helps turn policy challenges into opportunities for sustainable, community-driven digital infrastructures. He is a 2025 Fellow at ITS RIO (Institute for Technology and Society).

Renata Avila is an international human rights and technology lawyer specialising in data governance, open knowledge, and digital justice. As the CEO of the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN), she leads global efforts to unlock the power of open data and knowledge commons, enabling individuals and organisations to drive social change through transparent and equitable access to information, knowledge, data and technical tools. With deep expertise in intellectual property and international trade policies shaping the digital economy, she actively analyses the intersection of intellectual property, data-driven innovation, and fair technology access, advocating for policies that prevent monopolistic control and foster open technologies. A vocal critic of restrictive digital trade agreements, she works to ensure that data sovereignty and emerging technologies contribute to economic justice rather than deepen inequalities.

A former fellow at the Stanford Institute of Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, she is affiliated with the Center for Internet and Society at CNRS, France. She serves on the boards of Open Future, the Center for the Advancement of Infrastructural Imagination, and Whistleblower Network Germany. She is a member of the Working Group on Data Governance at all levels, established by the United Nations Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD).

Richard Littauer is a PhD student in Computer Science at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington in Pōneke, Aotearoa New Zealand. He is also one of the two organizers of CURIOSS, the community for university and research institution open source program offices, and he is an organizer for SustainOSS, and has recorded hundreds of podcasts on open source sustainability there. He has been interested and involved in open source communities for decades.

Shannon Dosemagen (she/her) is an environmental health advocate with over two decades of experience at the intersection of open technology, science, and justice. She works to create systems that support community-led approaches to environmental and public health, particularly in fenceline and frontline communities. Shannon is the founder of Open Environmental Data Project, where she currently serves as Senior Fellow, and previously served as Executive Director from 2020 to 2024. She also co-founded Public Lab and the Gathering for Open Science Hardware.

Shannon has served on numerous boards, including the (U.S.) National Parks Conservation Association, Code for Science and Society, and the Open Science Hardware Foundation. She previously chaired the (U.S.) National Advisory Council on Environmental Policy and Technology and the Citizen Science Association. Recognized for her leadership, she is an Ashoka Fellow and has held fellowships with the Harvard Berkman Klein Center, Shuttleworth Foundation, and Rita Allen Foundation, among others.

Signe is a doctoral candidate at the University of Cambridge exploring the intersections of international security, dual-use technology and infrastructure, and human rights.

She is a research affiliate at the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy (University of Cambridge) working with the ICRC's Delegation for Cyberspace, and is also an affiliate to the Secretariat to the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group for Climate and Security.

Previously, Signe worked at Chatham House's International Security Programme and has consulted for the Centre for Information Resilience and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Since 2011, Tobias has been accelerating the innovation of sustainable technologies through open-source and open data. With a PhD in Atmospheric Physics and a Master's and Bachelor's degree in Aerospace Engineering, he has worked on various sustainable R&D projects, mainly using open source and open data. He created OpenSustain.tech, ClimateTriage.com and leads the OhMyGrid initiative as Electrical Grid Mapping Lead at Open Energy Transition.

Wayne Wei Wang is a Non-Resident Fellow at the FGV Center for Technology and Society (Brazil) and an ACCP Fellow at the African Center for Cyberlaw and Cybercrime Prevention (South Africa). He recently completed a Ph.D. in Law and Technology at the University of Hong Kong. With an interdisciplinary background in Engineering and Law, his research focuses on Intellectual Property, Data Protection, AI Governance, and Science & Technology Studies, with an emphasis on Law, Innovation, Sustainability, and Technology (LIST) in the Global South. His work appears in Computer Law & Security Review, Journal of AI Law & Regulation, and edited volumes from Oxford and Cambridge. Wayne holds an LLM from WIPO-QUT (Australia) and is an Associate Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy. Wayne co-drafts the Chinese Model AI Law, deemed as one of the two emerging legislative proposals on AI in China. He received the 2025 PTC Emerging Scholar Award granted by Pacific Telecommunications Council and contributes to the UN IGF’s Dynamic Coalition on Data and AI Governance.