Laura DeNardis

Dr. Laura E. DeNardis (L.E.D) is an American author and the inaugural Endowed Professor of Technology, Ethics, and Society at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. At Georgetown, she serves as the Director of the Center for Digital Ethics and the Director of the undergraduate program in Tech, Ethics, and Society (TES).

In 2020, Wired UK listed her as one of 32 Global Innovators Building a Better Future. DeNardis is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She was elected to membership in the Cosmos Club in 2015 for engineering distinction.

Among her seven books are The Internet in Everything: Freedom and Security in a World with No Off Switch (Yale University Press 2020), The Global War for Internet Governance (Yale University Press 2014), Opening Standards: The Global Politics of Interoperability (MIT Press 2011); Protocol Politics: The Globalization of Internet Governance (MIT Press 2009); Researching Internet Governance: Methods, Frameworks, Futures (MIT Press 2020), and others.

Her expertise and scholarship have been featured in the New York Times, Science Magazine, The Economist, National Public Radio and NPR Marketplace, Newsweek, Reuters, Forbes, the Washington Times, The Atlantic, Christian Science Monitor, El Pais, La Repubblica, Time Magazine, Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Slate Magazine, among others. DeNardis has given keynote addresses, book talks, or invited lectures at hundreds of venues on six continents including the Royal Society, the United Nations, the National Press Club, Brookings, the National Academy of Sciences, Politics and Prose, Harvard Book Store, McNally Jackson, and the world’s most distinguished universities including Oxford, Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, Princeton, McGill, Humboldt University Berlin, Cornell, University of Pennsylvania, Tel Aviv University, Stanford University, and untold others.

With a background in information engineering and doctoral training in Science and Technology Studies, DeNardis is an expert adviser in Internet governance and architecture to Fortune 500 companies, foundations, and government agencies. DeNardis has more than twenty years of experience in strategic Internet architecture consulting. She previously served as an appointed member of the US State Department's Advisory Committee on International Communications and Information Policy.

She has held a number of leadership positions throughout her career including Executive Director of the Yale Information Society Project from 2008-2011, Interim Dean of the School of Communication at American University from 2019-2022, and Director of Research for the Global Commission on Internet Governance. Professor DeNardis was a Professor at American University from 2011-2011 and was the recipient of American University’s highest faculty honor - Scholar-Teacher of the Year - in 2018. During the fast-paced Internet growth years of the 1990s, she was the President of Internet strategy consultancy Atlantic Consulting Group (Falls Church, VA) and previously worked as a computer networking management consultant for Ernst & Young's global information technology practice. She is a co-founder and co-series editor of the MIT Press Information Society book series.

Laura DeNardis holds an A.B. in Engineering Science from Dartmouth College; a Master of Engineering from Cornell University; a Ph.D. in Science and Technology Studies from Virginia Tech (Phi Kappa Phi); and was awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School.

DeNardis is a classically trained guitarist. She resides in Washington, D.C.