[IRPCoalition] Self-nomination to the IRPC SC

[Dennis Redeker]

Dear IRPC members,

I hope you all had a great start to 2022! Like Meri, I toss my hat into the
ring for the vacant steering committee position of our Coalition.

I am a political scientist (postdoc) at the University of Bremen, Germany.
My research and teaching takes place at the newly created Platform
Governance Lab at the Centre for Media, Communication and Information
Research (ZeMKI). A member of the IRPC since 2017, I now hope to contribute
to the coalition‘s work on a different level. What brought me to the IRPC
in the first place was a commitment to upholding human rights and my
research interest in the Charter. My PhD dissertation focused on the
internal organization and external advocacy of transnational Internet
rights networks - I interviewed a number of experienced IRPC members to
better understand how documents like the Charter can be used to realize
human rights online. Resulting papers (including on the IRPC) are to be
published later this year.

Internet governance is both an academic and a practical passion of mine.
Since 2017, I have attended all global IGFs, several EuroDIG meetings, a
YouthDIG, and several national IGFs (Germany, USA). I co-organized IGF
workshops in 2018 and 2021 (Paris/Katowice), and attended other convenings
in the field, such as RightsCon (since 2018). I am also a member of GigaNET
- a network of IG scholars. In 2019, I co-founded the Digital
Constitutionalism Network (DCN), an interdisciplinary network of IG
scholars interested in human rights & the Internet, and dedicated to
outreach beyond the ivory tower. The DCN focusses on Internet rights
charters and declarations and has thus far collected more than 200 such
documents (the Charter being one of the most prominent examples), see
digitalconstitutionalism.org/database. As a DCN member, I co-organized
panels at conferences and summer schools in which IRPC members presented
the Charter and the work of the coalition.

At the University of Bremen, my teaching portfolio includes classes such as
„Global Internet Governance“, „Global Governance of Digital Tech“, „Actors
and Institutions in Internet Governance“, and (most fittingly) „Human
Rights in the Digital Age“. In addition, I have been working on topics such
as digital skills in small island states (consulting for the ITU) and
researched various questions related to the Internet and human rights (e.g,
as a visiting researcher at New York University and Harvard‘s Berkman Klein
Center for Internet & Society, and a fellow at the Bochum-based Center for
Advanced Internet Studies).

So much for the bio. Here are my plans for a steering committee term
2022-2024:

   - *Support IRPC sessions at IGF and beyond*: I want to focus my work on
   bringing the Charter to even more fora and communities, while defending
   (and contributing to) the Coalition‘s strong position within the IGF
   ecosystem. Specifically, I plan to initiate or support IRPC contributions
   to EuroDIG, and to support IRPC session submissions and organization for
   the IGF meetings in Ethiopia and Japan. In addition, I would support the
   role of IRCP in co-hosting of Internet human rights events in between
   larger IG meetings (but thematically focussed on the coalition's IGF
   session topics and priorities).
   - *Sustainability and human rights in IG*: I want to expand on the
   IRPC‘s strong role in championing environmental sustainability at the IGF.
   I would follow and contribute to the work of the Policy Network on
   Environment (PNE) and other relevant fora/groups. Article 4b of the Charter
   is more timely than ever.
   - *Translation of the Charter into Japanese*: With the 2023 IGF taking
   place in Japan, a focus of my work would be to get the Charter translated
   into Japanese in time. I would fundraise for this goal specifically and
   coordinate the translation process.
   - *More (stakeholder) diversity*: I would prioritize greater stakeholder
   diversity among active membership and in the official positions of the
   Coalition. The private sector, the technical community, and public
   institutions are important partners, who are pivotal in realizing the
   rights and principles outlined in the Charter. I would like to combine
   these efforts with fundraising for Charter translation projects (see above)
   and I would also aim at sub-national public stakeholders, e.g. building on
   the effective work of the IRPC in engaging cities through the partnership
   with the Cities Coalition for Digital Rights.

I hope to be able to convince you that I would be a suitable member of our
Coalition's steering committee. It would be an honor to serve you in the
SC.

Thank you for taking the time to read this candidate statement.

Best wishes,
Dennis Redeker
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