Independent Scholar
Melinda Sebastian is a Data & Society affiliate. Previously, she was a senior policy analyst with D&S’s Public Technology Leadership Collaborative (PTLC), where she worked on fostering tech policy in the public interest. That work included authoring the PTLC’s monthly “Circle Back” newsletter, leading a group of early career tech policy researchers, and highlighting sociotechnical rights-focused research practices to academic, industry, federal, local, and civil society members of the PTLC. Melinda’s research utilizes an intersectional ethical approach that focuses on structural inequalities in emergent ethical issues in media, technology, and information policy. Her areas of expertise include surveillance and privacy, AI, sociotechnical design, epistemicide, and platform governance issues including neutralidad de la red, content moderation, and legislative approaches to automation/algorithmic decision-making. She holds a PhD in Culture, Communication, and Media from Drexel University.
