The Centre for the Internet and Human Rights (CIHR) is a vibrant hub for academic research about technology and society. Our goal is to inform current public and academic debates by producing high-quality research grounded in theory and empirical data.

The CIHR was born out of discussions among scholars who felt that many of the debates about the Internet and its impact on human rights are too simplistic and lack empirical dept.

The CIHR strives to be a platform for individuals who share a common goal of promoting high quality research about internet and human rights. The core academic team is comprised of scholars and PhD candidates from international relations, political science, sociology and law.

The international fellowship program brings together practitioners, researchers, activists, philosophers, diplomats, computer scientists, who help translate academic results into real-life impact. Fellows contribute to current projects at the CIHR, develop their own research and help to disseminate research results beyond academic communities.

We are:

Independent We only accept funding that guarantees integrity and credibility of our research. We do not accept funding from large corporations or national security organisations. Instead, we focus on obtaining funding for research from public sources such as European Horizon 2020 or German DFG or BMBF funding.

Interdisciplinary We build strong theoretical foundations for our empirical research drawing on existing knowledge in different scientific disciplines. We look for most adequate theoretical frameworks in social and political sciences, law, economics and computer science.

Practical We engage directly with practitioners from civil society, governments, private sector and technical community to inform our research and produce results useful in the real world. We participate in policy debates, improve research capacity of civil society and promote our research results in the media.

Global We ground our research in perspectives from countries around the world, from South Africa to Pakistan and from Armenia to Chile. We strive for diversity and truly global perspective in our research and results.

Viadrina is located in Frankfurt (Oder) in the Brandenburg region, about an hour away from Berlin. Since its reestablishment in 1991, Viadrina brings together young people and researchers from every corner of the world. Viadrina has three faculties:

• Law
• Social and Cultural Sciences
• Business Administration and Economics

Location next to the German-Polish border makes Viadrina a perfect place to research and teach cultural, social, political and economic borders and their dissolution in the European, and particularly the Central and Eastern European, context. One of the key research institutions within the university is the Viadrina Center B/ORDERS IN MOTION, which aims to foster academic networks, augment interdisciplinary approaches in order to reconsider Europe within a global context.

The global Network of Centers (NoC) is a collaborative initiative among academic institutions with a focus on interdisciplinary research on the development, social impact, policy implications, and legal issues concerning the Internet. This collective aims to increase interoperability between participating centers in order to stimulate the creation of new cross-national, cross-disciplinary conversation, debate, teaching, learning, and engagement regarding the most pressing questions around new technologies, social change, and related policy and regulatory developments.

• European University Viadrina
• Hans-Böckler-Stiftung
• Deutsch-Polnische Wissenschaftsstiftung
• The German Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth