Current Partnerships
Global Network of Internet & Society Research Centers
In October 2014, the Nexa Center took the role the coordinator of the Global Network of Internet & Society Research Centers (NoC), a collaborative initiative among academic institutions with a focus on interdisciplinary research on the development, social impact, policy implications, and legal issues concerning the Internet. This collective aims to increase interoperability between participating centers in order to stimulate the creation of new cross-national, cross-disciplinary conversation, debate, teaching, learning, and engagement regarding the most pressing questions around new technologies, social change, and related policy and regulatory developments. The NoC was launched by a group of academic centers – amongst which the Nexa Center – in December 2012 in recognition of the lack of internationally coordinated research and engagement activities in issues concerning the Internet and related technologies, together with seven international co-hosts, within an international Symposium on Internet-Driven Developments: Structural Changes and Tipping Points (SCTP), hosted by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.
On December 2016, the Nexa Center handed over the activities to the next NoC coordinator, the ITS in Rio de Janeiro. On November 23, before handing over the activities to ITS Rio, the NoC counted 76 Research Centers. A full list of the Centers is available here: on October 8, 2016, an informal meeting of the NoC took place in Berlin in the occasion of the AoIR2016 conference. For Spring 2016 a series of Hangout Calls on Internet & Society hot topics is planned. Since 2017, the Nexa Center works on the development and implementation of the new semantic connected platform of NoC. A “beta” version of this platform has been presented by the Nexa Center within the annual meeting of the NoC, which took place in Rio de Janeiro on November 6-12, 2017.
From 2018 onwards, in addition to actively participating in the informal (hangout calls) and formal meetings of the NoC, the Nexa Center continued to collaborate with its community. The collaboration took the form of two main initiatives: the presentation of the research paper “Ethical and Socially-Aware Data Labels“ within the Conference “AI: Legal & Ethical Implications” held in the Center for Cyber Law & Policy, University of Haifa; the collaboration to the first design of an Erasmus+ Jean Monnet – Networks initiative (“Growing European Societies in the Digital Age: Sustainability, Social and Legal Issues”), together with the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (Barcelona), the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (Berlin), the Center for Internet and Society (Paris), the Haifa Center for Law & Technology (Haifa) and the New Research on Digital Societies (Warsaw).
From 2019 onwards, the Nexa Center continued to collaborate with its community by participating in the “NoC @IGF 2020 and in the Research Sprint “AI and Content Moderation”. As part of the Internet Governance Forum 2020, the NoC organized, in collaboration with Wikimedia Italia, the Virtual Village Booth: the Nexa Center participated in the “Interactive Chats” , with a speech by Juan Carlos De Martin (available here) to talk about the projects of the center and the experience of Biennale Tecnologia, and contributed to populating a virtual exhibition space dedicated to the works of the centers pertaining to the NoC. As part of the project “The Ethics of Digitalisation – From Principles to Practices”, organized by Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG), the Nexa Center participated in the Research Sprint “AI and Content Moderation”, with an interview with Juan Carlos De Martin and Antonio Vetrò: the sprint, which took place virtually over the course of ten weeks from August until October 2020, was the first research format of the project “The Ethics of Digitalisation – from Principles to Practices” under the patronage of the German Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. This project, which ran until July 2022, aims to foster a global dialogue on the ethics of digitalisation by involving stakeholders from academia, civil society, policy, and the industry. The project comprises research sprints and smaller clinic formats hosted by several research institutes of the Global Network of Centers.
The initiative is still ongoing, although to a lesser degree since it has been negatively impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. The Nexa Center continues to be part of the Network.
Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University
In April 2011, after many years of collaboration, the Nexa Center signed a partnership agreement with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. As part of the Nexa-Berkman collaboration, prof. Juan Carlos De Martin spent several months at Harvard as Berkman Klein Center faculty fellow. Also prof. Alessandro Mantelero, who was a faculty fellow at the Nexa Center from 2011 to 2017, spent a month at the Berkman Klein Center.
In June 2010, the Nexa Center welcomed its first exchange student: Yael Resnick, a student from the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard Law School, who performed a research about the ACTA negotiations. In 2013, Maria Serena Ciaburri, one of the best students of the 2012 edition of the Rivoluzione Digitale course at the Politecnico di Torino, spent 10 weeks at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University as a Summer Intern. After her, other students from the Rivoluzione Digitale course spent the summer as interns at the Berkman Klein Center: in 2014 Flavio Giobergia, in 2015 Dario Chaifouroosh, in 2016 Francesco Mecca, in 2017 Piera Riccio, and in 2018 Mehdi Khrichfa. The executive director of Berkman Klein Center, prof. Urs Gasser, who was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Nexa Center from 2012 to 2019, stated in reference to the collaboration between the two centers: “The Berkman Klein Center has been successfully collaborating with our friends in Torino ever since May 2005, when we jointly organized the Torino Harvard Internet Law Program”. “Another milestone was undoubtedly the 2010 “University and Cyberspace” international conference. The agreement comes at a moment when there is a clear need to strengthen the ties among Internet & Society centers worldwide, to better address the global challenges and opportunities regarding the Internet and its evolution.”
Today, although the formal agreement between the two centers has expired and the student exchange has ended, the relationship with the Berkman Klein Center continues. Indeed, the Berkman Klein Center has inspired and supported our work, remaining a reference point for the center’s research. Our co-director and co-founder, Juan Carlos De Martin, currently remains a Faculty Associate of the Berkman Klein Center.
Department of Law at the University of Turin
Since its foundation in 2006, the Nexa Center has worked closely with the Department of Law at the University of Turin.
The collaboration was built thanks to the work of Nexa Center co-founder and co-director Marco Ricolfi, full professor of Intellectual Property Law and Business Law at Turin Law School until May 2022.
The Nexa Center has had the opportunity to deal with legal concepts several times, often through the input of Fellows and Staff and thanks to their competences.
The Department of Law has continuously provided the Nexa Center with several interns and researchers over the years who have helped with the daily work of the center.
Past Partnerships
Global Network Initiative
In March 2013 the Global Network Initiative (GNI) welcomed new participant the Nexa Center for Internet & Society. GNI is a non-governmental organization with the dual goals of preventing Internet censorship by authoritarian governments and protecting the Internet privacy rights of individuals. “We’re pleased to welcome GNI’s first participant from Italy“, says GNI Executive Director Susan Morgan. “The Nexa Center is a critical source of interdisciplinary research, informed by expertise in technology, law, and economics, on Internet policy from a European perspective“. Colin Maclay, GNI Board Member and Managing Director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University said: “Since its founding, the Nexa Center’s leadership by example—within Italy and across Europe—has proven the power of thoughtfully blending rigorous interdisciplinary research with sustained public engagement. Their collaborative approach to taking on many of the most pressing policy issues of our time is especially timely given GNI’s increasing engagement with European companies, and I am simply thrilled to have them aboard.”
Internet & Society Lab at Keio University
In April 2012 the Nexa Center announced the signing of a partnership agreement with the Internet & Society Lab at Keio University (Tokyo, Japan). The agreement provides for the development of joint research projects, seminars, conferences, courses as well as the exchange of researchers between the two research centers. The signing was preceded by the appointment in June 2011 of prof. Juan Carlos De Martin, co-founder and co-director of the Nexa Center, as Keio Senior Visiting Researcher. Furthermore, in early December 2011 prof. De Martin visited Keio University, giving a lecture to Japanese students and meeting with prof. Jun Murai, director of Internet & Society Lab, as well as Dean of the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies at Keio. “The Internet has become a global phenomenon at an unprecedented speed, affecting societies worldwide”, says Professor Jun Murai. “It is now time that the Internet & Society research groups in different parts of the world start strengthening their ties, to create not only a pool of shared research results, but, more importantly, of mutual understanding among researchers living in different political, cultural and economic contexts. This agreement with the Nexa Center for Internet & Society at Politecnico di Torino is a much welcome step in that direction.”