Our Team

Principal Researcher

Yuval Shany

Prof. Shany oversees the work of the entire research team.

In addition, he explores the conditions in international law for recognizing new human rights, the adaptability of existing international human rights law to meet the challenges of the digital age

and the considerations relied upon by decision makers when selecting different right-protecting approaches.

He is also particularly interested in the right to a human decision maker.

Research Associates

Yohannes Eneyew Ayalew’s current research explores the ways in which regional approaches, such as the African, European, and Inter-American human rights systems, inform, complement, and possibly depart from international human rights law (IHRL)

regarding human rights in the digital environment. While IHRL seeks to protect digital human rights in various ways, such as transposing existing offline rights to the online sphere, creating new digital rights, and imposing rights and obligations on big

tech companies, regional systems, on the other hand, offer normative and institutional frameworks that are unique to local realities and contexts across different regions.

Despite IHRL’s potential to provide a universal framework, it often ignores (and renders invisible) regional contexts in the Global South, which grapples with a wide digital divide and other structural challenges.

Noa Mor

Noa's research examines the influence of private actors' AI governance on users' rights.

Her current focus is on digital linguistic disparities, analyzing how Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Large Language Models (LLMs)

offer far-reaching opportunities while also reinforcing offline hierarchies and restricting participation for speakers of digitally marginalized languages.

Her earlier research explored content visibility reduction, a powerful AI-driven moderation strategy leveraged by digital platforms to limit content exposure without outright removal.

Maria Varaki

Maria’s research addresses from a theoretical perspective the question if the state remains the beginning and the end point of reference for the protection of human rights.

while traditional human rights theories attributed. The central role to the state, the emergence of powerful non state actors that exercise elements of public power, invites a reassessment of the foundational conceptualization about the potential duty

holder(s). In this endeavor, several angles will be explored such as the concept of publicness and of governing space, the existence of HRs blackholes, the evolution of extraterritoriality (topos), the “risks” of self-regulation and the role of ethical

considerations within the broader context of what we call law of global governance.

Tomer Shadmy

Tomer Shadmy’s current research explores the construction of digital rights through non-human-rights law arrangements

These arrangements include technological design, private ordering, corporate governance, investment practices, and ethical mechanisms.

The study maps, conceptualizes, and problematizes the actual and potential use of these alternative sources for advancing the needs and interests served by digital human rights.

It also examines the interplay between these parallel tracks, as well as the pros and cons of advancing digital human rights through extra-legal arrangements.

Tamar Megiddo

Tamar Megiddo’s current research explores the limitations of human rights law in addressing and curbing the harms resulting from the international trade in spyware.

While human rights are apt to describe the relationship between a spyware target and the government spying on them and provide redress, this is arguably not the case with respect to the victim’s relationship with the state exporting or permitting the

export of military-grade spyware. It would often be difficult to attribute spyware-related violations of rights to the exporting government

and such abuse often takes place outside its jurisdiction and in a manner which would not meet the tests of extraterritorial jurisdiction.

Research Fellows

Amir Cahane

Amir’s research project, ‘Digital Rights and Surveillance,’ aims to review the evolving sphere of influence and reach of surveillance technology on digital rights,

and to examine whether existing legal frameworks award sufficient protection to individuals, and whether new digital rights require articulation.

The research project will explore these questions through the study of three surveillance measures: Counter-Encryption measures, social scoring systems and Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT).

Dafna Dror

Dafna's research seeks to critically evaluate the normative gaps in the application of international human rights law in the digital environment.

In particular, it explores whether, and how, should international human rights law be adapted to provide an effective protection for individuals rights in the digital age.

dafnadror@gmail.com

Three Generations of Digital Human Rights