2024 TNGO Symposium: The State of Global Affairs and Misinformation

Ahmed X. Medien is a systems engineer, a data scientist, and a global convener on the subjects of credibility online/information integrity, looking for empathy, common sense, and middle ways to the challenges of misinformation and citizens input into the behind platform and content governance online. In the past 5 years, he led several symposia, public fora, and conferences with hundreds of academic researchers on trustworthiness and credibility of information online, civil society organizations, practitioners amongst platforms workers and analysts. You can observe his work via the MisinfoCon global summit series, the Conference for Truth and Trust Online, the Misinformation Village series and the Wikicredibility demo hours series as well as the WikiCred funded research projects.

In 2024, Ahmed is focusing on the intersection of community, design and computational technologies including AI to build new digital pathways towards peace online and in the real tangible world, free democratic debate, and transformational change in society; in arts, governing and online expression. You can follow Ahmed’s work on his website.

Déborah Rouach is the co-founder and co-director of the Gender in Geopolitics Institute, leading the think tank's research department. Déborah has a master's degree in "International Strategy Analyst, Geopolitics and Future Studies" from IRIS Sup’. She is specialised in issues of Feminist Foreign Policy, the place and roles of women in conflicts and post-conflicts, "Women, Peace and Security" Agenda, women in Iran, and the instrumentalisation of gender in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In her research, Natalia Stanusch is interested in studying digital media artifacts by way of critical theory. Stanusch wrote and presented on topics such as memes, algorithmic imaginaries and AI counter-imaginaries, datafication practices, algorithmic auditing, digital alienation, and the ontology of digital images. She is an author of book chapters, articles, and video essays which range in scope from methodological interventions to autoethnographic experimental pieces. Stanusch’s research foci meet at a crossroad of critical data and algorithm studies, science and technology studies, digital visual culture, and art history. In her practice, Stanusch often brings together twentieth-century avant-garde legacies and media studies, as she did in e.g. her analysis of the Metaverse. Currently a PhD candidate at ASCA, University of Amsterdam, Stanusch has also been a research lead for Slow AI project at AIxDesign and an academic coordinator for a non-profit DataEthics.eu.

Judy Boyd is a Senior Fellow at The Arctic Institute. Her research interests include national security, geopolitics, international law, and Arctic governance. She is currently Senior Information Law Counsel for the United States Coast Guard and a Colonel and Judge Advocate in the United States Army Reserve.

Judy has been working in the national security field for more than twenty years. Previous civilian positions include serving as a privacy officer and senior intelligence law attorney with the Department of Homeland Security and staff counsel for the United States House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. In her military capacity she has served as legal advisor for USSOCOM, USEUCOM, USARCYBERCOM, USINSCOM, and deployed for Operation Iraqi Freedom and NATO Operations Joint Forge (Bosnia) and Resolute Support (Afghanistan).

Judy has previously interned for the United Nations Ozone Secretariat in Nairobi, Kenya and for the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria.

Judy holds a Juris Doctor from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Law, a Master of Arts in Security Studies (Homeland Security and Defense) from the Naval Postgraduate School Center for Homeland Defense and Security (NPS-CHDS), a Master of Strategic Studies from the U.S. Army War College, and a Cybersecurity Graduate Certificate from Harvard University. Her NPS-CHDS thesis, “Introducing the Future Now: Using Memetics and Popular Culture to Identify the Post 9/11 Homeland Security Zeitgeist,” was awarded the Outstanding Thesis Award.

Banji Chona is an artist, researcher and curator. Chona’s artistic practice is expressed through earth-based alchemy, which involves using natural materials and elements to create artistic offerings that are grounded in the telluric and often spiritual practices of the Batonga of present-day Zambia. Chona combines this with research and curation which allow the exploration of themes of identity, memory, and history grounded in a sense of storytelling and healing. Chona uses multi-disciplinary practice rooted in the act of reflecting on ancestral memory in present times, as well as in a projected future, using the self-composed framework of Radical Zambezian Reimagination. This notion is used by Chona as a portal that leads to the creation of alternative perspectives that challenge and repair pre-existing asymmetries in history that have informed the present. The use of the term Zambezia instead of Zambia is a clear example of this methodology, in that it is founded on the idea of imagining or reimagining an ancestral land that is not constrained by the limitations of reality. Chona’s works manifest in the visual, written and aural realm as experimental performance pieces, installations and dialogue.

Maureen Duru is the Founder and Director of The Food Bridge vzw, with projects focusing on indigenous food cultures and agrifood entrepreneurship in Africa and Europe. Ms Duru has developed initiatives and programs focusing on African Diasporas, food cultures, entrepreneurship and development; including the Food Bridge’s flagship annual event - African Diaspora Agrofood Forum. She is the author of the book - Diaspora, Food, and Identity. She has also written for peer reviewed journals and presented internationally, papers focusing on migrants, diaspora identity, food and related themes. She obtained her masters and doctorate degrees from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, where she is also a researcher with FOST-the international social and cultural food studies research group. Ms Duru believes in the importance of community driven development actions and volunteers for different local community initiatives. She is the vice president of Sankaa vzw, a Flemish government funded federation of over eighty Belgian associations and is a member of the International Organization of Migration’s Diaspora Advisory board.

Rossy Antúnez is a Sociologist and community member of the Ëyuujk nation. She collaborates at the Institute for Women in Migration, based in Mexico City, an organization of civil society that defends and promotes the rights of women in the context of migration. They are part of a network of civil society, Bloque Latinoamericano, that encompasses a regional
work regarding migration and its multiple aspects.