Speakers Speakers (Decidim Fest 2023)

A philosopher-developer, she has spent 9 years implementing civic technology projects with Mexican governments and organising citizen civic hacking communities. In 2019 she was director of Open Government in the Mexico City government where she first implemented Decidim, and has been part of the community ever since. She is currently director of strategy at Codeando México and part of the coordination committee at Decidim.

Coordinator of Public Innovation 360 of Asuntos del Sur. Degree in Social Communication (UBA). Master in Communication, Culture and Digital Citizenship (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos and Media Lab Prado) specialist in democratic innovation processes, open government and political communication.

Sociologist of design and technology. His research focuses on how the technology industry, public policy, finance and infrastructures are entangled with social expectations to produce certain forms of knowledge and collective visions of the future.

He shares learning spaces at Elisava, UOC and ESCAC, among others, where he weaves together media studies, critical thinking, social sciences, speculative practices and research through art and design. 

He is co-founder of Becoming, a collaborative research and design studio on emerging scenarios. His work has been presented at MACBA, The Influencers, Hangar, Sónar +D (Barcelona), Medialab Prado (Madrid), Sandberg Institute (Amsterdam) and The New School (New York) among others. He writes in different media and his work has been published in books such as Crossmedia Innovations (Peter Lang, 2012) and Design Does (Elisava, 2018). 

Through Engineering Fiction he observes and experiments with the imaginary and mythological components of technological and scientific systems. He is also part of Tecnopolítica and Vector, spaces aimed at thinking about key challenges of contemporary digital cultures, societies and politics, from a critical and proactive approach.

Andreu Francisco is since 2019 General Director of the Localret Consortium, formed by 920 local administrations in Catalonia with the mission of accompanying municipalities in the digital transformation of their towns and cities.

He holds a degree in Business Administration and Management from the University of Barcelona, an Executive Master in Public Administration from ESADE and an Executive Programme in Digital Transformation from La Salle University.

He was Mayor of Alella from 2003 to 2019. He was president of the University School of Maresme attached to the UPF between 2007 and 2008, president of the University Studies and Research Council of the Tecnocampus Foundation during the period 2009-2011, and vice-president of the Tecnocampus Foundation during the period 2011-2015.

Antonio Casado is Senior Researcher at the University of the Basque Country, where he has done pioneer work on Health Care Ethics Committees and the digital platforms that manage their information and deliberation, paying special attention to the narrative and relational aspects that modulate these flows. In general, his contributions have aimed to reinforce the practical, technological and situated dimension of collective deliberation, which has led him to study alternative forms of political representation, such as Citizen Assemblies and their associated digital platforms. He is currently leading an action-research project for the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa, deployed in seven counties and involving 25 researchers from different centers, with the first instance of Decidim in Gipuzkoa. He also coordinates the contribution of the UPV/EHU to Arantzazulab, the reference Center for Social Innovation in Gipuzkoa, where he works mostly on collaborative governance and democratic innovation. His research team is interdisciplinary and action-oriented: http://aktibait.eus/.

Arnau Monterde is Director of Democratic Innovation at the Barcelona City Council. He is responsible for the decidim.barcelona platform and co-founder of the Decidim platform. He has also promoted the Canòdrom - Center for Digital and Democratic Innovation in Barcelona, a public centre for innovation and research at the intersection between technology and democracy. He was coordinator of theTecnopoliíticaproject at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3-UOC). He is part of various programmes and projects on digital rights, free software, technological sovereignty and democratic innovation in the digital age. He holds a PhD in the Information and Knowledge Society from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.

Ashwin (they/them) is a queer bahujan activist and researcher, working in algorithmic fairness and AI ethics. They are currently a graduate student at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, and previously served as the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Admin for Queer In AI, a non-profit organization that strives to make AI and AI spaces inclusive for queer people.

Over the last year, Ashwin has worked extensively on surveying social, legal and institutional barriers faced by the queer community in AI, and documenting the limitations of mainstream AI auditing processes in the face of queerness. Their research on community-led participatory AI with Queer In AI won the best paper award at the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability and Transparency in 2023.

She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of São Paulo (USP) and a Bachelor of Law from the University of Brasília (UnB). Professionally, she has worked both as a practitioner and as a scholar at different stages of her career. She is a member of the Federal Civil Service as a specialist in public policy and government management, with more than 12 years of experience in the public sector. She is currently the Director of Digital Participation and Network Communication at the General Secretariat of the Brazilian Presidency of the Republic, in charge of the Brasil Participativo platform.

Previously, she has worked in different agencies such as the Government Transition Cabinet, the Secretariat for the Promotion of Racial Equality and the Secretariat of Management of the Government of the State of São Paulo. As main achievements, she highlights the creation of the Youth Participatory Observatory, which received the ARede award for the best public interest content site in 2014, and the general coordination of the 3rd. National Youth Conference, an event that brought together more than 3,000 people from across the country in 2015.

As a researcher, she has worked at IPEA (Institute for Economic Applied Research), a think tank of the Brazilian government, where she coordinated the

Civil Society Organizations Map. She is also a collaborating researcher at the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (Cebrap) and a visiting researcher at the University of California Berkeley. She has articles published in Brazilian and international journals such as Critical Policy Studies, Brazilian Political Science Review, Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais and Georgetown Journal of International Affairs. She has also been interviewed and published in various media such as: Vox.com, Jornal Nacional (Rede Globo), O Assunto (Podcast G1), Folha de São Paulo, O Globo, Estado de São Paulo and Nexo Jornal. In 2022, she received awards for the best article and best policy brief in papers presented on Participatory Budgeting at an ICLD event.

Dr Carla Silva Rocha Aguiar is a professor and researcher in Computer Science, specializing in Software Engineering. She is currently a member of the Department of Software Engineering at the University of Brasília (UnB). She boasts prolific research in software engineering, ranging from free software and agile methodologies to project-based teaching strategies. She coordinates the Brasil Participativo collaboration project with the Brazilian Federal Government, engaging 70 collaborators across various domains to construct the Brazilian digital participation platform. Her studies delve into open-source development, community ecosystems, mentorship, system-of-systems, social networks, the DevOps movement, and ML-enabled systems. She has been actively involved in the free software community, fostering its growth and development. Founded the program "Big Open Source Siblings”, awarded by Gnome Engagement Challenge, which aims to reach underrepresented groups in tech who want to be mentored and assisted in learning how to work on open-source projects.

Carola Castellano Josa holds a PhD in Political Science (2016) and a degree in Sociology (1998) from the UAB. Master in Initiation to Research in Political Science and Administration: Thinking and Governing Complex Societies (UAB, 2009), Postgraduate in Participation and Sustainable Development (UAB, 2000) and Master in Social Economy and Management and Administration of Non-Profit Organisations (UB, 1999).

She works in public administration as head of the Citizen Participation Section of the Agenda 2.030 and Participation Service (Barcelona Provincial Council) advising and training political and technical teams of the city councils of the Barcelona area on how to involve citizens in the design, implementation and evaluation of public policies related to different areas of the local world.

She is currently an associate lecturer in the Department of Political Science and Public Law at the UAB and a consultant lecturer at the UOC.

Her professional and academic career is linked to the analysis and evaluation of public policies, citizen participation, social transformation and local government.

Carol has worked as a GIS analyst both in the private and public sector. At Localret, where she has worked over the past few years, she coordinated several ICT projects for municipalities, with a focus on digital platforms for citizen engagement.

She is one of the cofounders of the Decidim project and is currently working as a head of product and coordinating different institutions to facilitate the collaboration among them.

Cristian Palazzi is a teacher, philosopher and head of citizen mobilisation and advocacy at Platoniq. He also advises several social welfare organisations on ethical development.

Daryna Sterina is the coordinator of the project EMVI Empowering Migrant Voices on Integration and Inclusion Policies in Germany. The project is co-funded by the European Commission's Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF). She builds networks at the European and local level between civil society actors, migrant communities and leaders as well as decision-makers in the local context, and investigates instruments that enable the participation and integration of migrants, especially third-country nationals in the European Union. A particular focus lies on integration and migration councils, migrant organisations as well as e-participation. She designs online and face-to-face training and workshops for migrants who want to become politically active.

She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Law and a Master of Arts in International Conflict Analysis.

David Cabo is the co-founder and co-director of Civio, an independent, non-profit foundation in Spain dedicated to promoting transparency and accountability in public authorities. Since its creation in 2012, Civio has distinguished itself for its unique approach that combines data journalism, activism and technology to bring about meaningful change in the public sphere. Through its investigations, based on access to information requests and extensive use of public sources, Civio uncovers crucial information in areas such as access to health, lobbying and public procurement.

Based on Brasília/Brazil, is a software engineering,CO-CEO, and founder of Pencillabs, an IT outsourcing company. With nearly a decade of experience, works mainly with backend development and DevOps, contributing to open source and free software projects. A former student of the University of Brasilia, currently workswith Decidimasinfrastructuretech leader on "Brasil Participativo", the new participative brazilian federal government platform.

She has a diploma in Social Work and a degree in Humanities. A civil servant at Barcelona City Council, she has worked as head of projects and public services in different neighbourhoods and districts of the city, especially on issues of community development and participation.

Since 2016, she has been in charge of the department for the Promotion of Participation of the Directorate for Democratic Innovation, where she has supported the Decidim community and promoted the Canòdrom project. In the framework of the Democratic Capital, she is working on the We want to decide! project, a participation process aimed at children and teenagers.

PhD in Sociology on the Information and Knowledge Society from the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3). Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) working in co-creation methodologies and citizen social science at Dimmons.net – transdisciplinary research group on digital commons, feminist / social economy, public policies and platform cooperativism. Member of the Peer-Produced Research Lab (U1284 INSERM – Université Paris Cité) led by Bastian Greshake Tzovaras, studying the implementation of commons-based peer production in citizen science and personal science. President of the Platoniq Foundation and co-founder of the open source Goteo.org platform for civic crowdfunding. Previously postdoctoral researcher at the Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities (Austrian Academy of Sciences), research fellow at CECAN (University of Surrey), vice-president of the Observatory for CyberSociety and associate professor of software studies at the UOC’s Faculty of Computer Science and Multimedia.

Originally from Jundiaí, Brazil. He holds a degree in Social Sciences and a Master's degree in Public Policy Management from USP. Executive Director of the Instituto Cidade Democrática, where he has been developing and applying free technologies that strengthen democracy. Consultant in digital participation methodologies for government initiatives, having developed projects with the General Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic, the National Secretariat for Youth and the National Secretariat for the Rights of Children and Adolescents. He is a researcher associated with the Advanced Laboratory for Production, Research and Innovation in Software (LAPPIS/UnB).

Heurística is an autonomous space for research, training and techno-scientific mediation. It is made up of researchers from different disciplines and backgrounds. It promotes transdisciplinary projects of empowerment, situated research and socialisation of technosciences.

He holds a PhD in Political Science and Administration from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. He holds a Master's degree in Political and Social Theory from the same university and a Master's degree in Philosophy of the Social Sciences from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Degree in Political Science and Sociology from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He also holds a Master's degree in Documentary Filmmaking from the Escuela de Cinematografía y Audiovisuales de Cataluña (ESCAC).

Furthermore, he is an expert in political and democratic innovation, including the field of consultations and referendums, deliberative citizens' assemblies by drawing lots, participatory constituent processes, the analysis of democratic quality, the right to decide and democratic sovereignty processes, the enrichment of local social capital and citizen cooperation mechanisms, and social cosmovisions (basic frameworks of political reference).

He has provided training for local councils all over Spain (including Lleida, Errenteria, Bilbao, Gasteiz, Malaga, Getafe, etc.). He has also taught at the School of Public Administration of Catalonia and is an associate lecturer at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and the Barcelona Institute of International Studies.

Author, co-author or coordinator (among others) of: Bases para la resolución de conflictos territoriales de soberanía en el marco europeo;Análisis de experiencias de democracia directa en el ámbito internacional; Referéndums. Una inmersión rápida;Els processos constituents al món. Experiències internacionals en democràcia deliberativa;Derecho a decidir. Teoría y práctica de un nuevo derecho;Cosmovisions socials. La peça que faltava.

Joel is a political scientist with a master's degree in Political Analysis and Institutional Consultancy (UB) and a postgraduate degree in Data Analysis (UB). He is currently a PhD student in Law and Political Science. His research is oriented towards understanding the relations of political representation at the local level. His interests focus on the functioning of representation in the context of digital practices of citizen participation.

Graduate in Political Science and Public Administration from the University of Girona and interuniversity master's degree (UAB-UB-UPF-UPF-School of Public Administration of Catalonia) in Public Management. She is a PhD student in political science at the University of Girona. She has been working as a researcher at the Digital and Electronic Administration Group of the UOC (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) since February 2022 and at d-CASO (Collective of Social Analysts) since October.

Dr. Maite Lopez-Sanchez is Associate Professor (TU) at the University of Barcelona (UB) and adjunct scientist at the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA-CSIC). Moreover, she is the coordinator at UB of the interuniversitary master on Artificial Intelligence (UPC-UB-URV), member of a consolidated research group, and one of the board directors of the EURAMAS (European Association for Multi-Agent Systems). Previously, Dr. Lopez-Sanchez was research manager at the innovation department of a company (iSOCO: Intelligent Software Components), and visitor researcher at the University of Southern California (USC). Since 1999, she studied her PhD on Artificial Intelligence at IIIA. Her current interests focus on the inclusion of moral values within autonomous systems and social deliberation.

Marta learned computer engineering at the UPF in Barcelona, participation in the Andean and Amazonian communities of Peru, creativity in her own search, and feminism in the oppression of psychological abuse. In 2019, her paths converged in Platoniq, an organisation where Creativity and Democracy coincide.

Mauricio Mejia works in the Open Government Unit at the OECD, where he coordinates the work on innovative citizen participation, including deliberation, commons and digital democracy. Prior to joining the OECD, Mauricio worked at the French Parliament and French Government, where he contributed to strengthening participatory practices in France. Mauricio is a Mexican national, and studied at Sciences Po Paris, where he now teaches the course “Re-imaging democracy and the digital public space”.

Nadia Nadesan is a researcher, writer, and illustrator working in digital civic participation especially with Decidim. Her work involves a mix of traditional academic research, UX research, and design facilitation. At Platoniq Foundation her work involves managing EU projects, developing methodologies for co-creation and workshops to envision futures of ethical tech, and facilitating product management for open source platforms from creating more consentful tech to increasing accessibility for more meaningful participation.

Nandini's work focuses primarily on research and policy advocacy in the areas of digital rights and development, as well as the political economy of women's rights in the information society. She is part of the organisation's advocacy efforts around the 2030 agenda on issues of data for development and digital technologies and gender justice. She also provides strategic support to IT for Change, Prakriye. This includes training programmes for women's rights groups on the adoption of digital tools in their field practice and critical empowerment education for rural adolescent girls. She holds a Masters in Urban and Rural Community Development from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.

Pablo Aragón is a research scientist at the Wikimedia Foundation, where he focuses on knowledge integrity and resilience to disinformation in Wikipedia and its sister projects. He is interested in computational social science and social computing through interdisciplinary and participatory approaches to enhance collaboration and deliberation in online platforms, including civic technologies and social media. Pablo is also an adjunct professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, a member of the Decidim team and a co-founder of the Barcelona Democratic Innovation Lab and the DatAnalysis15M research network.

After a master's degree in law and political science at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and an experience in participatory financing, Pauline switched to technical project management and product issues.
She is the Chief Operating Officer at Open Source Politics, a company aiming to help cities and public institutions design citizen participation initiatives. She's engaged in open-source and civic tech since 2019, and is a member of the Decidim association coordination committee.

(they/them) Rayén is co-founder of Radical Data, a collective that uses data and builds tools for resistance and alternative futures. With a background in contemporary dance and community projects, through Radical Data they began exploring data and technology as tools for transformation.

They believe that by getting closer to our bodies, we get closer to political change and work with data from a queer, decolonial and differently abled perspective.

Róbert is an entrepreneur that introduced the web to Iceland in 1993 and to Denmark in 1995. He co-founded the non-profit Citizens Foundation in 2008, focusing on citizen participation and digital democracy. The organization aims to connect governments and citizens by creating open, state-of-the-art engagement platforms and offering consultation on executing citizen engagement projects. Before co-founding the Citizens Foundation, Róbert worked in the videogame industry, where his teams received many industry awards, including two BAFTA awards.

Romy Grasgruber-Kerl is the founder of Mitgestalten Partizipationbüro or the Austrian Participation Bureau. It supports cities, municipalities, public institutions, and civil society in facilitating participatory processes by implementing Decidim platforms.

The focus of their work in 2023 is on addressing the lack of inclusion of people without voting rights in city politics. On the one hand, the Participation Bureau is supporting the Empowering Migrant Voices project in cooperation with NGOs and municipalities by creating inclusive Decidim platforms for the target group of people with a migration background in five countries.

Romy was a partner in a research project of the Austrian Chamber of Labour, which aimed at identifying central mechanisms of exclusion and collecting the needs and ideas of citizens with the goal of contributing to more democracy and inclusive political participation in the city of Vienna. 

She holds a master's degree in International Development and had worked for an Austrian umbrella organization of NGOs for 10 years before founding the Mitgestalten Partizipationbüro.

Sara Suárez Gonzalo is a Juan de la Cierva postdoctoral researcher at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute and lectures in Communication (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya). Her research focuses on the social and political implications of data-driven technologies with special interest in their effects on democracy, social justice and fundamental rights. She co-directs the academic journal Quaderns del CAC and is a member of the Advisory Council on Artificial Intelligence, Ethics and Digital Rights of the Barcelona City Council.

Simonas serves as the Product Manager for Open Source Politics, France's leading Decidim integrator. With a focus on product discovery and design, he actively engages with institutional partners and works with a team of designers and developers to roll out new features, enriching the user experience and meeting organizational objectives.

She holds a PhD in Mathematics specialising in the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence. She works on projects related to the ethical and social dimensions of artificial intelligence. She is particularly interested in algorithmic bias, gender issues and public understanding of technology.

She is currently a researcher at the Barcelona Super Computing Centre and a lecturer in data science ethics and legality at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México. She has been a Member of the Advisory Board of the Mexican Federal Telecommunications Institute and a research fellow at Imperial College London.

Social communicator-journalist (Universidad del Quindío - Colombia), specialist in Human Rights and Governance and Behavioural Economics applied to the design of public policies (Universidad Torcuato Di Tella - Argentina). Programmatic Director of Think and do Tank Asuntos del Sur, where she leads public innovation processes with governments and civil society organisations. Consultant in the design and implementation of educational tools with a focus on diversity and inclusion.

Xabier E. Barandiaran holds a PhD in Philosophy of Science and works on the transdisciplinary intersection of cognitive sciences and complex systems, collaborative innovation and participatory democracy. He studied the Master of Evolutionary and Adaptive Systems at the University of Sussex in the UK and it was there that he came into contact with the world of artificial life: a cross between biology, mathematics, computers, art, philosophy and engineering. He is a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country and a researcher at the IAS-Research Centre for Life, Mind and Society. Xabier has been a founding member of the Decidim project, of which he is still a member, coordinator of Democratic Innovation and advisor to Barcelona City Council, co-founder of the Spanish Network of Research in Cognitive Sciences, co-founder of WikiToki.net (Laboratory of collaborative practices) and of the project Buen Conocer/Flok Society.

FeliciLab was created as a Laboratory and Movement for Innovations in the SUS in Ceará. With the dismantling of the Lab at ESP, the Movement has been strengthened and has taken on the responsibility of multiplying happiness as the purpose of innovation and health! Follow: https://t.me/MovimentoFeliciLab.