CISI TEAM
Chris Gilliard, PhD
Co-Director
Chris Gilliard, PhD, is a writer, professor, and speaker whose scholarship examines digital privacy, surveillance, and the intersections of race, class, and technology. She was recently a JustTech Fellow of the Social Science Research Council, and Visiting Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center. Dr. Gilliard is a member of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry Scholars Council and Surveillance Technology Oversight Project community advisory board. His book Luxury Surveillance is forthcoming from MIT Press in 2025.
Dr. Gillard’s recent work posits that while minoritized and poor people have the greatest vulnerability to intrusive and experimental forms of surveillance, privileged people are not as exempt from probing sensors as they imagine themselves to be. In fact, their embrace of luxury surveillance technologies expands the surveillant gaze far beyond the eyes of the state. His writing traverses the involuntary imposition of carceral technologies on Black Detroit and public school classrooms, to the willing middle class embrace of high status gadgets that encourages a surveillant gaze far beyond the eyes of the state.
Joan Donovan, PhD
Co-Director, Founder
Joan Donovan, PhD, is an award-winning sociologist and Assistant Professor of Journalism and Emerging Media Studies at Boston University. She is coauthor of Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America. Dr. Donovan’s research focuses on media manipulation and democracy. Her work has been showcased in various outlets such as NPR, The New York Times, MIT Technology Review and more. She is the former Research Director of Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media Politics and Public Policy.
She also co-created the beaver emoji. 🦫
Contact: Joan@publicinterestinter.net
On social media as BostonJoan
Rick Valenzuela
Senior Data Analyst
Rick Valenzuela is a cybersecurity analyst specializing in log data analytics and threat detection engineering. At CISI, he's a senior data analyst working on creating the Internet Observatory to monitor social media chatter. Before that he was a Nieman affiliate at Harvard University, concentrating his classes in cybersecurity, disinformation, crisis management and policy. In Vienna, Austria, he led a team of threat detection engineers maintaining the IT and information security monitoring and alerting for critical infrastructure and financial institutions. Previously he was a journalist, reporting and editing in China, Southeast Asia, West Africa and Europe, and he pivoted careers after teaching digital security workshops to fellow foreign correspondents with the press club in Cambodia, where he was president. His work has appeared with Agence France-Presse, Australia's ABC, Switzerland’s SRF, Voice of America, BBC and the Guardian. Since then he's advised reporters and news organizations on cybersecurity.
Stephen C. Rea
Senior Researcher
Stephen C. “Stevie” Rea is an anthropologist specializing in digital culture. At CISI, he leads the networked incitement project, monitoring “voter vigilante” groups’ coordination within and across social media platforms. Before joining CISI, Stevie worked in academia and civil society, teaching and researching about digital culture and advocating for targets of online hate and harassment. His work has been published in journals including American Anthropologist, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, and Law & Policy, and in edited volumes, most recently a co-authored chapter in Social Processes of Online Hate. Before working in the digital extremism space, Stevie’s research covered online gaming in South Korea, digital financial inclusion in the Global South, credit unions and payments technologies in the United States, and the legal implications of machine learning and artificial intelligence integrations with institutional processes. He received his PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Irvine in 2015, and also has a Master of Arts in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago (2005) and a Bachelor of Arts in Cross-Cultural Relations from Simon’s Rock College of Bard (2003).
Dan Shea
Managing Director
Dan Shea has 10 years experience in non-profit management as the former founder and director of Brain Arts Organization, which published the Boston Compass newspaper and Boston Hassle website supporting arts and culture throughout the city. Dan has hosted events in the Boston music and arts scene for over 25 years and continues to foster community.
Contact: