Advisors

Nani Jansen Reventlow is an Associate Tenant at Doughty Street Chambers and an affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, where she was a 2016-2017 Fellow. She has been an advisor to Harvard’s Cyberlaw Clinic since 2016. Nani is a recognised international lawyer and expert in human rights litigation responsible for groundbreaking freedom of expression cases across several national and international jurisdictions. Between 2011 and 2016, Nani has overseen the litigation practice of the Media Legal Defence Initiative (MLDI) globally, leading or advising on cases before the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the UN Human Rights Committee, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and several African regional forums. Nani obtained the first freedom of expression judgment from the African Court on Human and Peoples’’ Rights (Konaté v. Burkina Faso) and from the East African Court of Justice (Burundi Journalists’ Union v. Burundi). As a Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center, Nani developed the Catalysts for Collaboration website (https://catalystsforcollaboration.org), which offers a set of best practices and case studies encouraging activists to collaborate across disciplinary silos and use strategic litigation in digital rights campaigns. A Dutch-qualified attorney, Nani graduated in civil law and public international law from the University of Amsterdam and specialised in human rights at Columbia Law School and the European University Institute. She has developed and delivered training sessions on freedom of expression and human rights litigation to dozens of lawyers from several diverse jurisdictions, including India, Russia, Cambodia, Hungary, Botswana and Croatia. Nani is a member of the project board of the Public Interest Litigation Project and a strategic adviser to GQUAL, campaign for gender parity in international representation. She further serves on the advisory group of the Internet Policy Observatory and on the board of Ranking Digital Rights.

Afsaneh Rigot is a scholar and researcher covering issues of law, technology, LGBTQ, refugee, and human rights. Her work and her research pose questions about the effects of technology in contexts for which it was not designed, and the effects of western-centrism on vulnerable and hard-to-reach communities. She also looks, in theory and practice, at how to constructively engage with power-holding corporations.

She is a senior researcher at ARTICLE 19 focusing on human rights issues and international corporate responsibility in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). She is also an Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, and a  Technology and Public Purpose Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s  Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

At ARTICLE 19, Afsaneh continues to lead transnational research uncovering how police and states in MENA use technology to target, harass and arrest LGBTQ people based on their identity. Independently, she has conducted the first research on the use of digital evidence and legal frameworks in the prosecution of LGBTQ people in courts.

Through her work and research, Afsaneh has created recommendations for major social media and communications technologies to push companies for accountability and responsibility for the safety, security, and privacy needs of communities she is embedded in. To date, her work has led to major changes to some of the biggest social media and communications platforms. She is also consulted by international NGOs and UN bodies.

Afsaneh has developed a design methodology for implementing changes to technology products by centering those most impacted, which she calls “Design from the Margins.” This methodology requiring a departure from structures and design processes that focus on the “main use cases,” instead highlighting the benefits to all users from design based on those most marginalized and gravely impacted by design decisions. The work refutes the often-repeated idea that due to business incentives, companies cannot be held to account for so-called “edge cases.”

Waide Warner is senior counsel in the Corporate Department of the law firm, Davis Polk, a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, and he serves as a Senior Advisor to the Cyberlaw Clinic. Waide works with the Clinic on matters related to digital inclusion, government use of technology and civic innovation. As a Davis Polk Partner for more than 25 years, he led the project finance practice, advising on a broad range of U.S. and international financings, restructurings, and joint ventures in the telecommunications, transportation, energy and mining sectors across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa.