Wendy H. Wong |
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORWendy H. Wong studies global governance. Her new book, We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age, will be published by MIT Press in 2023. She is particularly attentive to how non-state actors (e.g. nongovernmental organizations, civil society actors, social movements, corporations) govern at the global and domestic levels. Her areas of interest are emerging technologies like AI, Big Data, human rights, and humanitarian assistance. Currently, she is Professor of Political Science and Principal's Research Chair at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan (located on Sylix Okanagan Nation Territory).
Dr. Wong has written two award-winning books, penned dozens of peer-reviewed articles and chapters, and has appeared in outlets such as the CBC, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, and The Conversation. She has been awarded grants from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada and Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, among other granting agencies. Dr. Wong is a Member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists. She is currently on leave from the University of Toronto, where she is Canada Research in Global Governance and Civil Society and Professor of Political Science. Previously, she was Research Lead at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society at the University of Toronto. From 2012-2017, she was Director of the Trudeau Center for Peace, Conflict, and Justice at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. Dr. Wong’s PhD is from the University of California, San Diego, a top political science program in the United States. She did her undergrad at UC Berkeley (GO BEARS!). Her pro teams are the Lakers and Chargers. She likes dogs over cats. If you want to work with Dr. Wong on any of the projects discussed on this website, feel free to contact her and introduce yourself. |
CURRENT TEAM
Salar AsadolahiSalar is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. His research largely focuses on comparative welfare state policies, public opinion, and parties and elections. His doctoral dissertation looks at the electoral politics of right-wing populism particularly as it relates to the Canadian case.
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Allison CuttnerAllison is a Postdoctoral Fellow on the Functional Governance project. Dr. Cuttner completed her PhD in Political Science at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia in 2021. Her research focuses on elite politics in authoritarian regimes and developing democracies with an emphasis on formal theory and applied statistical methods. Learn more about her research here: https://www.allisoncuttner.com/
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Jamie DuncanJamie Duncan is a PhD student at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies and a Junior Fellow at Massey College. He has written and spoken about the use of advanced technology in policing and border security, the political communications of public safety, as well as transparency and accountability in Canadian governance. Jamie’s doctoral research focuses on processes of technology adoption and use in border security and is supported by a Canada Graduate Scholarship in Honour of Nelson Mandela. He is a researcher at the Centre for Access to Information and Justice at the University of Winnipeg as well as the University of Toronto’s Centre for Ethics.
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Stefan KehlenbachStefan Kehlenbach is a Postdoctoral Fellow working on the Governance of Emerging Technologies group. He received his PhD in political theory from UC Riverside in 2022. His research focuses on the intersection of technology, power, and politics. Specifically, his work develops a new critical theory of big data, examining the impact that emerging technology has on conceptual frameworks of politics. Stefan’s research has appeared in Theory & Event and The Journal of Military Ethics. His public-facing work has appeared in the Washington Post and in APSA’s Educate blog.
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Valérie KindarjiValérie is a PhD candidate at University of Toronto interested in international security. Her research focuses on the indirect effects of foreign disinformation on democracy. More specifically, using a combination of experiments and interviews, she seeks to understand how disinformation impacts democratic institutions, and how democracies respond to these growing threats. Her research discusses faith in democratic institutions, platform governance, and digital literacy initiatives. Her previous work on Canadian foreign policy and military intervention has been featured at WIIS Canada as part of the Emerging Thought Leaders programme. This research has also yielded a fellowship at the Trudeau Centre for Peace, Conflict & Justice. Currently located in Montréal, her interests include horror movies, novels, dogs, and the great outdoors.
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Alex MartinAlex Martin is a PhD student at the University of Toronto’s Department of Political Science. Alex’s doctoral research focuses on exploring discourses regarding the future of work in the era of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation with a focus on how normative language is applied to various types of work and may impact evaluation of different knowledges, traditions, or practices. She is a Junior Policy Analyst with the Artificial Intelligence Hub in Innovation, Science, and Economic Development Canada where she supports work on public awareness of AI and future skills and talent development. She holds a master’s degree in public policy and global affairs from the University of British Columbia and a Bachelor of Arts with Honors from the University of Alberta.
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Alfred OduroAlfred Oduro is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, where he studies African civil society, NGO membership in international organisations, global governance, pan-African norms, and politics of the African Union. He is also part of the NGO Data and GRNDS research team, helping to understand how global civil society organizations are regulated in their respective states.
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Victoria ValeVictoria is the Project Manager for Wendy's Research Team and a former Research Assistant for the Functional Governance project. She graduated with High Distinction from the University of Toronto in June 2021 with an Honours Bachelor of Arts in International Relations and Political Science. Victoria’s senior thesis was titled “Violent Disruptors or Service Providers? Re-Evaluating Houthi Rebel Interactions with Humanitarian Aid Operations in Yemen.”
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ALUM
Sanjida Amin |
Dafna Dror-ShpolianskyDafna Dror-Shpoliansky is a human rights lawyer, and a Ph.D. candidate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is currently a visiting doctoral student at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. Dafna's research focuses on human rights law in the digital age.
Prior to pursuing her Ph.D., Dafna worked for six years as a legal counsel at the Office of the Deputy Attorney General of Israel (International Law Department), where she specialized in advising on international human rights law aspects regarding legislative procedures and supreme court proceedings, as well as reporting to the UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies. Her recent publication, co-authored with Prof. Yuval Shany, "It’s the End of the (Offline) World as We Know It: From Human Rights to Digital Human Rights – A Proposed Typology", was recently published at the European Journal for International Law. |
Michael FaubertMichael Faubert is a former University of Toronto Ph.D. student and serves as Project Coordinator for the Global Registry of Non-Profit Data Sources (GRNDS). His academic research interests lie at the intersection of the History and Philosophy of Science & Technology and International Politics, focusing on the framing effects that different forms of evidence have on global policymaking. As a Toronto-based artist and illustrator, he is currently exploring the use of visual models, diagrams and illustrations in the historical and current practices of scientific communication.
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Tanya IrwinTanya is a PhD student at the University of Toronto. Her PhD looks at insurgent group taxation and the production of order during conflict, with a focus on the Philippines. She has worked with the International Centre for Tax and Development, the World Bank, and the Organization for Migration. She has been a fellow with the Trudeau Centre for Peace, Conflict and Justice, and is currently a Junior Fellow with the Defence and Security Foresight Group.
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Julian PosadaJulian Posada is a Postdoctoral Associate and Assistant Professor (starting in 2023) at Yale University’s American Studies Program. His work integrates theories and methods from sociology, information studies, and human-computer interaction. Posada’s current project explores the relationship between human labor and artificial intelligence. It centers on the experiences of outsourced workers in Latin America employed by digital platforms to produce data for machine learning and to verify algorithmic outputs. His interdisciplinary research has been published in the journals Information, Communication & Society, the Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, and in chapters published by Oxford University Press and SAGE. Posada’s website can be found here.
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Takumi ShibaikeTakumi Shibaike is an Assistant Professor of International Relations at Duke Kunshan University. Prior to Duke Kunshan, he held postdoctoral positions at the European University Institute and the University of Calgary. He is interested in the role of small NGOs in global governance, especially in the areas of biodiversity and climate change. His research has appeared in Global Environmental Politics, Global Society, and Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, among other venues. For more information, visit his website.
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