Heidi Tworek and Elizabeth Dubois are conducting case studies on the Election Modernization Act and content regulation with TheTechLobby.
Dr. Elizabeth Dubois (PhD, University of Oxford) is an Associate Professor and University Research Chair in Politics, Communication and Technology at the University of Ottawa where she runs the Pol Comm Tech Lab and is a member of the Center for Law, Technology and Society. She is also a Fellow at the Berkman-Klein Center at Harvard University and an Affiliate at the Center for Information, Technology and Public Life at University of North Carolina. Her work examines political uses of digital media including media manipulation, citizen engagement, and artificial intelligence. She hosts the Wonks and War Rooms podcast where political communication theory meets on the ground strategy. Find her on Twitter @lizdubois and at www.polcommtech.ca or check out her latest edited book, Citizenship in a Connected Canada.
Dr. Heidi Tworek is a Canada Research Chair and associate professor of international history and public policy at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. She is an award-winning researcher of media, history, health communications, international organizations, and platform governance. She directs the Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions at UBC. She is a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation as well as a non-resident fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. She co-edits Journal of Global History.
Maria Gintova is conducting a case study on immigration with TheTechLobby.
Dr. Maria Gintova is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Master of Public Policy in Digital Society program at McMaster University. She holds a PhD in Policy Studies from Toronto Metropolitan University. Prior to joining McMaster, Dr. Gintova worked for federal and Ontario governments for 11 years. She held positions such as Senior Policy Advisor (Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services and Ministry of Long-Term Care), Senior Policy/Program Analyst (Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services), Team Leader (Ministry of Transportation), and Immigration Officer (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada). Dr. Gintova’s research and teaching is focused on digital and open government, social media use in government, public administration, and social policy. Her publications appeared in Government Information Quarterly and Canadian Public Administration journals.
Tony Porter is conducting a case study on digital services taxationwith TheTechLobby.
Tony Porter (Professor of Political Science, McMaster University) conducts research on business regulation and global governance, including especially financial regulation, private and hybrid public/private rulemaking, and the organizational effects in governance of technologies, numbers, and time.
Mackenzie Porter is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science at McMaster University.
Mackenzie’s research focuses on data privacy in Canada with a specific focus on the collection, use and sale of Canadian consumer data by the data broker industry.
Tamara Shepherd is conducting a case study on Amazon’s AWS lobbying in Canadawith TheTechLobby.
Tamara Shepherd is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, Media and Film at the University of Calgary. She studies the feminist political economy of digital culture, looking at policy, labour, and literacy in social media, mobile technologies, and digital games. She is an editorial board member of Social Media + Society, and her work has been published in Convergence, First Monday, International Journal of Cultural Studies, and the Canadian Journal of Communication.
Amanda Clarke is conducting a case study on the provision of social security benefits with TheTechLobby.
Amanda Clarke (Carleton University)
Fenwick McKelvey is conducting case studies on broadcast regulation and artificial intelligence policy with TheTechLobby.
Tanner Mirrlees is conducting case studies of the tech lobby and the Federal government, with the aim of refining and renewing an empirical basis for key concepts in the political economy and critical institutionalism research traditions, such as power, the state, imperialism, dependency, and intersectionality.
Tanner Mirrlees is the current Director of the Communication and Digital Media Studies program at Ontario Tech University and a former president of the Canadian Communication Association (CCA) (2020-2022) and a past organizer of the CCA’s annual conference for the Congress of the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences (2018-2020). Mirrlees is the author of numerous books, including Work in the Digital Media and Entertainment Industries: A Critical Introduction, EdTech Inc.: Selling, Automating and Globalizing Higher Education in the Digital Age (with Shahid Alvi), Hearts and Mines: The US Empire’s Cultural Industry, Global Entertainment Media: Between Cultural Imperialism and Cultural Globalization. Mirrlees is on the boards of the Canadian Journal of Communication and Democratic Communiqué.
Research Assistants
Helen Beny is a Research Coordinator with TheTechLobby and a PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science at McMaster University.
Helen’s research focuses on the intersection of technology and politics, specifically examining media policies, surveillance, and digital repression in both democracies and autocracies.
Fizza Kulvi is a Research Coordinator with TheTechLobby and a PhD candidate at McMaster University.
Brad McNeil is a Research Coordinator with TheTechLobby and a PhD candidate at McMaster University.
Brad studies intersections between freedom of expression, automated content moderation, and platform regulation from critical and historical perspectives. Brad completed a Master of Arts in History at University of Waterloo where he researched the 1964 Free Speech Movement at UC Berkely and the origins of the 1960s New Left movement.
Charnjot Shokar is a Research Coordinator with TheTechLobby.
Kyle Wyndham-West is a Research Coordinator with TheTechLobby.
Michelle Rodrigues is a Research Assistant with TheTechLobby assisting Dr. Elizabeth Dubois and Dr. Heidi Tworek with the Election Modernization Act and content regulation case studies.
Michelle is a third-year law student at the University of Ottawa. She graduated from the University of British Columbia with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science. Michelle looks forward to applying the skills she developed working on Parliament Hill and contributing to this exciting project.
Emmanuel Appiah was a Research Coordinator with TheTechLobby and a Law student at the University of Ottawa. He completed a Master of Arts in Communication and New Media where he conducted research on copyright and critical race theory.
