Melbourne Law School Postdoctoral Fellow | Dr Monika Zalnieriute
Dr. Monika Zalnieriute begins new research at the Melbourne Law School, CMCL
Dr. Monika Zalnieriute is human rights scholar and advocate, working in the area of Internet Governance, data privacy, surveillance, freedom of expression and the rights of marginalized and vulnerable groups online. Monika has just joined Melbourne Law School as a Post-Doctoral Fellow and will be working on her two-year research project ‘Digital Rights of Marginalized Groups: LGBT & Big Data’. Monika believes that research only matters if it has a strong and tangible impact well beyond academia; and thus is actively engaged both within academic, civil society and policy-making circles.
Monika holds a PhD in Law from European University Institute in Florence. She is also a founding Director of a researched-based non-governmental advocacy organization ‘ZEPHIRO: Progressive Platform for Human Rights’ in Vilnius, Lithuania; a visiting Fellow at the Center for Media, Data and Society at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary; and an affiliated Fellow at the Centre for Internet & Human Rights in Berlin, Germany. Monika also provides legal research expertise on data privacy and free speech issues to Council of Europe and non-governmental human rights organizations.
Monika is currently serving on the Executive Committee of the Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group (NCSG), which is part of the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO), within Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), and works towards the strengthening of the human rights protection within ICANN policies and procedures in particular. Council of Europe as well as Article 19 released her expertise reports on ICANN & human rights, that have attracted a lot of attention among various stakeholders within Internet Governance circles.
Monika often delivers talks at various international Information Society gatherings and international workings groups, such as the United Nation Internet Governance Forum, EuroDIG, International Working Group on Data Protection in Telecommunications, and the Council of Europe Committee on Data Protection, among others. She has published in European Journal of International Law, International Journal of Law and Information Technology, Computer Law & Security Review and International Data Privacy Law. Monika was previously a legal researcher at Privacy International and a research assistant at the European University Institute. She also holds an LLM in International and Comparative Law from the European University Institute and an LLM in European Law from the University of Leiden; and has previously conducted research in the UK, France, Netherlands, Lithuania and Italy. In Melbourne, she now focuses on Asia-Pacific in particular.