To delve deeper into the concepts covered in REMIT’s second conference session’s topics, and to offer participants a glimpse of what awaits them (or why you should register if you haven’t already!), we’ll be rolling out a Session Series in the weeks leading up to the event.
Our final content session in Rome before the closing remarks is also our final panel – panel 3.
| April 16, 09:30 – 11:00 | Panel 3: “Digital Autonomy and International Relations” Chair: Joep Crompvoets (KU Leuven) Speakers: Marilena Gala (Roma Tre University), Murielle Popa Fabre (INRIA), James Shires (Virtual Routes), Chiara Spiniello (University of Bremen) |
The panel is chaired by our Belgian partners and hosts of our previous conference, KU Leuven!
The panel largely focuses on the EU’s evolving pursuit of digital autonomy but the panel will also consider how other actors approach digital sovereignty and technological self-reliance. It examines how the EU is seeking to strengthen its technological capabilities, regulatory influence and strategic independence in key digital sectors while dealing with a context o technological competition, supply chain vulnerabilities and the increasing fragmentation of the global digital ecosystem.
Session speakers
Prof. Dr. ir. Joep Crompvoets is full professor and research manager at KU Leuven Public Governance Institute (Belgium) holding the chair on ‘information management in the public sector’. He held faculty positions at Wageningen University (The Netherlands) and Melbourne University (Australia), and was employed by CSIC IRNAS research institute in Seville (Spain). He is founder and scientific director of the Erasmus+ Mundus Joint Master of Science in Public Sector Innovation and eGovernance (PIONEER) together with Münster University (Germany) and Tallinn University of Technology (Estonia). He has been involved in numerous (inter)national research/educational projects related to data infrastructures, data science, public sector innovation, digital transformation, technology adoption, interoperability, and e-governance. His work has been supported by UN Statistics Division (UN-GGIM), World Bank, European Commission, BELSPO (Belgium), NWO (Netherlands), and numerous (>25) national governments around the world. Finally, he wrote more than 500 publications in the fields of geo-information science, public sector information management, data science, e-governance, digital transformation in the public sector and soil science and is member of several editorial boards of several scientific journals.
Marilena Gala is Associate Professor of the History of International Relations at the Department of Political Science, University of Roma Tre, where she coordinates the MA course in International Studies. Her research interests include the history of nuclear power and the arms control process, the history of transatlantic relations, and the more general evolution of international security policy, with a focus on the role played by certain dual-use technologies. She is a member of the advisory board of the Young Women and Next Generation Initiative of the EU Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Consortium, and, since its inception in 2011 has been one of the instructors of the Nuclear Boot Camp – a summer school created as part of the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project funded by the Carnegie Foundation.
Dr. Murielle Popa-Fabre is a senior Senior Tech and Policy Advisor and Technologist bridging technology, policy analysis and AI Governance at the AI & Society Institute (ENS-PSL).
With a distinguished international academic background in Natural Language Processing and Cognitive Neuroscience at Cornell University, Collège de France and INRIA, she brings deep technical expertise to policy discussions on Generative AI and Neuro-techology. Her policy experience includes advising organizations such as the Council of Europe, the UN ITC-ILO (Action research on the impact of neurotechnology on lifelong learning), the European Comission (GPAI-CoP), France 2030 National Innovation Fund for Generative AI ecosystem building, while she also advises C-level executives on their corporate Responsible AI strategy, deployment and evaluation, and contributes to AI Industrial standards (CEN-CENELEC/ISO).
Her expertise honed through teaching and research at leading international academic labs spans from training Large Language Models, building training datasets, fine-tuning algorithmic architectures and modeling how the human brain processes like syntax. She recently joined the newly founded AI & Society Institute and actively champions AI literacy and regulation awareness through media and public speaking.
James Shires is the Co-Director of Virtual Routes. He is also a Fellow with The Hague Program on International Cyber Security. He was previously a Senior Research Fellow in Cyber Policy at Chatham House, and before that an Assistant Professor in Cybersecurity Governance at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, University of Leiden. He has written widely on issues of cybersecurity and international politics, including cybersecurity expertise, digital authoritarianism, spyware regulation, and hack-and-leak operations. He is the author of “The Politics of Cybersecurity in the Middle East” (Hurst/Oxford University Press, 2021), and co-editor of “Cyberspace and Instability” (Edinburgh University Press, 2023).
Chiara Spiniello (PhD) is a legal scholar specialising in digital constitutionalism, digital sovereignty, electoral processes, and forms of government. From 1 April 2026, she will join the ZeMKI Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research at the University of Bremen as a Postdoctoral Researcher. Previously, she held research positions at the University of Salerno and the University of Florence. She also worked as Research Assistant at Luiss University. She has co-taught courses for foreign universities, including Sciences Po and the University of Luxembourg, and provided teaching support at Luiss University, Sapienza University of Rome, and the University of Florence. She is the author of several scientific publications and has presented her research at conferences and seminars. She is also a member of the organising committees of SWING and GIG-ARTS.