People

Professor Toni Erskine, Chief Investigator and Workshop Co-Convenor

Toni Erskine is Director of the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs and Professor of International Politics at The Australian National University (ANU). She is also Editor of the journal _International Theory: A Journal of International Politics, Law, and Philosophy_ and Associate Fellow of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at Cambridge University. She currently serves as Academic Lead for the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific/APRU ‘AI for the Social Good’ Research Project and in this capacity works closely with government departments in Thailand and Bangladesh. She is also a Chief Investigator and Founding Member of the ANU ‘Humanising Machine Intelligence’ Grand Challenge Research Project. Her research interests include the moral agency and responsibility of formal organisations in world politics; the ethics of war; the responsibility to protect (R2P); joint purposive action and informal coalitions; and the impact of new technologies on organised violence.

Professor Steven E. Miller, Workshop Co-Convenor

Steven E. Miller is Director of the International Security Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School, Harvard University. He is Editor-in-Chief of the quarterly journal, _International Security_, and also co-editor of the International Security Program's book series, Belfer Center Studies in International Security (published by the MIT Press). Previously, he was Senior Research Fellow at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and taught Defense and Arms Control Studies in the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is editor or co-editor of more than two dozen books, including, most recently, _The Next Great War? The Roots of World War I and the Risk of U.S.-China Conflict_. Professor Miller is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, where he is a member of their Committee on International Security Studies (CISS). He currently leads the Academy’s project on Promoting Dialogue on Arms Control and Disarmament. He is also co-chair of the U.S. Pugwash Committee and a member of the Council of International Pugwash.

Emily Hitchman, Project Research Officer

Emily Hitchman is the Research Officer on the _AI, Automated Systems, and Future Use-of-Force Decision Making: Anticipating Effects_ project. Emily is a PhD scholar at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre focussing on the history of the Glomar (‘neither confirm nor deny’) response in the national security context. She is also a 2023 Sir Roland Wilson Scholar, and has appeared on the National Security Podcast speaking about her research, and as a panellist at the 2022 Australian Crisis Simulation Summit speaking about the future of intelligence. Emily has worked professionally across the national security and criminal justice public policy space, including in law enforcement and cyber policy, and holds a Bachelor of Philosophy from The Australian National University.

Dr Bianca Baggiarini, Project Participant

Bianca Baggiarini is a political sociologist and Lecturer in military and war studies at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University (ANU). Her research and teaching are aimed at applying sociological theories and methods to the study of war. Bianca’s current research is on the sociopolitical and ethical impacts of autonomy and AI-enabled technologies in military and security contexts. She is examining the role of trust discourse in shaping debates about ethical military AI (arguing that machine learning algorithms naturally agitate rules- and standards-based orders, thereby challenging the possibility of trust), the changing status of soldiers’ labour in response to increasing autonomy, and the social meaning of technology demonstrations as it relates to communicating the ethical and legal potential of AI-enabled systems. Her forthcoming monograph, Governing Military Sacrifice, is one of the first books to connect the rise of drones and combat unmanning with military and security privatization and includes original interview data from both drone advocates and critics alike. Bianca holds a PhD (2018) from York University in Toronto, an MA in sociology from Simon Fraser University, and a BA in political science from Simon Fraser University. From 2019 to 2021, she was a Researcher at UNSW at the Australian Defence Force Academy.

Dr Justin K. Canfil, Project Participant

Justin K. Canfil is a postdoctoral fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School, a nonresident scholar with Princeton University's Center on Contemporary China, and an incoming Assistant Professor of International Relations and Emerging Technologies at Carnegie Mellon University. From 2024-2025, he will take leave to complete a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellowship at the Council on Foreign Relations. Dr. Canfil's research interests concern the impact of emerging technologies on international law and arms control, both past and present. His research has appeared in outlets such as the Journal of Cybersecurity and the Oxford Handbook on AI Governance. He received a Fulbright Scholarship to conduct doctoral research in China and a PhD in Political Science from Columbia University. He can be reached at [www.jcanfil.com](http://www.jcanfil.com/) or on Twitter @jcanfil.

Maurice Chiodo, Project Participant

Maurice Chiodo is a research associate in the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge. He is the co-founder and principal investigator of the Ethics in Mathematics Project, where his work addresses the ethical challenges and risks posed by mathematics, mathematicians, and mathematically-powered technologies. His research looks at the ethical issues arising in all types of mathematical work, including AI, blockchain, finance, modelling, surveillance, cryptography, and statistics. He has been running a seminar series on ethics in mathematics for the past 7 years as part of the Cambridge University Ethics in Mathematics Society, and sat on the ethics advisory group of Machine Intelligence Garage UK for 3 years. He is about to release "A short guide to responsible mathematical work", and is currently writing a monograph "Ethics for the working mathematician", both of which are the first works of their kind. Maurice comes from a background in research mathematics, holding two PhDs in mathematics from the University of Cambridge and the University of Melbourne on problems in algebra and computability theory. He has over 20 years experience studying, working, and teaching, in mathematics departments around the world.

Associate Professor Jenny L. Davis, Project Participant

Jenny L. Davis is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the Australian National University (ANU). Dr. Davis's work follows two broad and overlapping trajectories in social psychology and technology studies. She focuses on role-taking, status, stigma, and identity, along with technological affordances and the politics of digital design. Her work intersects technology studies and social psychology, with a current focus on AI and machine learning. She is Deputy Lead of the Humanising Machine Intelligence Program at the ANU, Co-Director of the ANU Role-Taking Lab, on the board for Theorizing the Web, Past Chair of the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology section of the American Sociological Association, and author of How Artifacts Afford: The Power and Politics of Everyday Things, published with MIT Press. 

Professor Ashley Deeks, Project Participant

Ashley Deeks is the Class of 1948 Scholarly Research Professor at the University of Virginia Law School. Her primary research and teaching interests are in international law, national security, intelligence, and the application of new technologies to those fields. She writes about the use of force, executive power, secret treaties, and the intersection of national security and AI, and she is the co-author of a leading casebook on foreign relations law. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute, a member of the State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Law, and a contributing editor to the Lawfare blog. She recently served as Special Assistant to the President, Associate White House Counsel, and Deputy Legal Advisor to the U.S. National Security Council. Before joining UVA, she served for ten years in the U.S. State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser, including as the embassy legal adviser at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad during Iraq’s constitutional negotiations. Professor Deeks received her J.D. with honors from the University of Chicago Law School, where she was elected to the Order of the Coif and served as an editor on the Law Review. After graduation, she clerked for Judge Edward R. Becker of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

Professor Marcus Holmes, Project Participant

Marcus Holmes is Professor of Government at William & Mary. He is Associate Editor of The Hague Journal of Diplomacy and is co-editor of Palgrave’s Studies in Diplomacy and International Relations series. He is also co-director of the Social Science Research Methods Center and director of the Political Psychology and International Relations lab, both at William & Mary. He is Principal Investigator on a US Department of State grant exploring the effect of people-to-people exchanges in US-Japan relations through the lens of baseball diplomacy over the last 150 years. His research explores various aspect of diplomacy, including dynamics of interpersonal relationship in international politics. He is the author of Face-to-Face Diplomacy: Social Neuroscience in International Relations, an award-winning book with Cambridge University Press. Holmes also is co-editor, with Corneliu Bjola, of a seminal volume on the use of social media in achieving diplomatic ends, Digital Diplomacy: Theory and Practice, with Routledge. His latest book project, Personal Chemistry, is co-authored with Nicholas J. Wheeler and is under contract at Oxford University Press.

Professor Sarah Kreps, Project Participant

Sarah Kreps is the John L. Wetherill Professor of Government, Adjunct Professor of Law, and Director of the Tech Policy Institute at Cornell University. She is also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Her work lies at the intersection of technology, politics, and national security, and is the subject of five books and a range of publications published in academic journals such as the _New England Journal of Medicine, Science Advances, Vaccine, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Network Open, American Political Science Review,_ and _Journal of Cybersecurity,_ policy journals such as _Foreign Affairs_, and media outlets such as _CNN_, the _BBC_, _New York Times_, and _Washington Post_. She has a BA from Harvard University, MSc from Oxford, and PhD from Georgetown. Between 1999-2003, she served as an active duty officer in the United States Air Force.

Dr Sarah Logan, Project Participant

Sarah Logan is a lecturer in the Department of International Relations in the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs at The Australian National University. She is a Chief Investigator at the University's “Humanising Machine Intelligence” Grand Challenge Research Project. Her research interests include the future of open source intelligence; the governance of international data transfers; the development of global privacy norms; and the geopolitics of global technology standards. Her work has been funded by the Annenberg School for Communication, the Australian government, and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific/Association of Pacific Rim Universities. Her first book, _Hold Your Friends Close: Countering Radicalization in Britain and America_, was published by Oxford University Press in 2022.

Dr Osonde Osoba, Project Participant

Osonde Osoba, Ph.D. (oh-shOwn-day aw-shAw-bah) is a researcher working at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning and public policy. Dr Osoba's research weaves together two strands: the application of AI/ML to problems in public policy as well as the examination of the implications of reliance on automated decision systems. Recurring themes in his work include algorithmic equity, modelling for decision support, and modelling the behaviours of social agents. Dr Osoba is currently a senior AI engineer on Fairness at LinkedIn where he works on helping enable the platform’s use of AI/ML in a responsible and trustworthy manner. Prior to LinkedIn, Osoba was a senior information scientist at the RAND Corporation and a professor of public policy at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. His policy research portfolio at RAND focused on AI/ML applied to problems in social and economic well-being and national security. At the Pardee RAND Graduate School, Osoba was the Associate Director for Tech & Narrative Lab, helping to pioneer a novel program in training the next generation of effective and creative tech policy thought leaders. Dr Osoba earned his B.Sc. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Rochester and his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from USC.

Mick Ryan, Project Participant

Mick Ryan is a retired major general in the Australian Army, where he spent 35 years and had the honour of commanding soldiers at troop, squadron, regiment, task force and brigade levels. He has a long-standing interest in military history and strategy, advanced technologies, organizational innovation, and adaptation theory. He was inaugural President of the Defence Entrepreneurs Forum (Australia) and is a member of the Military Writers Guild. He is a keen author on the interface of military strategy, innovation, and advanced technologies, as well as how institutions can develop their intellectual edge. In February 2022, Mick retired from the Australia Army. In the same month, his book War Transformed was published by USNI Books. He is an adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC, and a non-resident fellow of the Lowy Institute in Sydney. In January 2023 Mick was also appointed as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.

Dr Mitja Sienknecht, Project Participant

Mitja Sienknecht is a postdoctoral researcher at the European New School of Digital Studies (European University Viadrina). Previously, she was an interim professor for European and International Politics at the EUV and a postdoctoral researcher at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center and the University of Münster and conducted research stays at Koç University (Turkey). Her paper on the debordering of intrastate conflicts based on her PhD received the best paper award in International Relations (IR) of the IR-section of the German Political Science Association. Her research interests include the (digital) transformation of violence and conflicts; border- and boundary studies; the responsibility of state and non-state actors in world politics; and inter- and intra-organizational decision-making in security contexts. Her work is situated at the intersection of IR, peace and conflict studies and science & technological studies (STS). In her current research, Mitja analyzes the impact of digitalization on armed conflicts and collaborates in developing and training an AI to identify argumentative structures in IR theories.

Dr Karina Vold, Project Participant

Karina Vold is an Assistant Professor at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto. She is also a Research Lead at the U of T Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society, an AI2050 Early Career Fellow with the Schmidt Futures Foundation, a Faculty Associate at the U of T Centre for Ethics, and an Associate Fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. Vold specialises in Philosophy of Cognitive Science and Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence, and her recent research has focused on human autonomy, cognitive enhancement, extended cognition, and the risks and ethics of AI.

Dr Benjamin Zala, Project Participant

Benjamin Zala is Fellow in the Department of International Relations, in the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs at The Australian National University. His work focuses on the politics of the great powers and the management of nuclear weapons. His work has appeared in over a dozen different peer-reviewed journals such as Review of International Studies, Journal of Global Security Studies, Third World Quarterly and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. His book Power in International Society: A Perceptual Approach to Great Power Politics is under contract with Oxford University Press and his edited volume, National Perspectives on a Multipolar Order, was published by Manchester University Press in 2021. He has been a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow in the Belfer Center for Science & International Affairs at Harvard University and has previously held positions in the UK at the Oxford Research Group, Chatham House, and the University of Leicester where he is also currently an Honorary Fellow working with the European Research Council-funded, Third Nuclear Age project (https://thethirdnuclearage.com/).

Professor Nicholas J. Wheeler, Project Participant

Nicholas J. Wheeler is Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science and International Studies and Institute for Conflict, Cooperation, and Security at the University of Birmingham (UoB). He is a non-resident Senior Fellow at BASIC (the London based NGO that works on international trust-building and nuclear diplomacy) where is he the academic lead on the BASIC-ICCS Nuclear Responsibilities Programme. His publications include (with Ken Booth) The Security Dilemma: Fear, Cooperation, and Trust in World Politics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); and Trusting Enemies: Interpersonal Relationships in International Conflict (Oxford University Press 2018). He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in the United Kingdom, a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales, and has had an entry in Who’s Who since 2011.