Leadership
Executive Director
Dr. Derrick L. Cogburn is Professor in the Environment, Development and Health Department in the School of International Service and the Information Technology and Analytics Department in the Kogod School of Business at American University. He is Founding Executive Director of the AU Institute on Disability and Public Policy (IDPP) and the IDPP for the ASEAN Region. He is also Faculty Director of the AU Internet Governance Lab. His research and teaching includes: global information and communication technology and socio-economic development; the socio-technical infrastructure for geographically distributed collaboration in knowledge work; multistakeholder institutional mechanisms for Internet governance; and transnational policy networks and epistemic communities.
Dr. Cogburn has published in major journals such as Telecommunications Policy, International Studies Perspectives, Journal of International Affairs, Assistive Technology, and Information Technologies and International Development (ITID). He has published with and/or advised the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), United Nations World Institute for Development Economics Research, the World Bank, UNESCO, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).
He has served as PI or co-PI on over $12 million in externally supported research, with grants from sources as diverse as the National Science Foundation, US Department of Education, JP Morgan Chase, Microsoft Research, The Nippon Foundation, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Dr. Cogburn directs the Center for Research on Collaboratories and Technology Enhanced Learning Communities (COTELCO), an award-winning social science research collaboratory investigating the social and technical factors that influence geographically distributed collaborative knowledge work, particularly between developed and developing countries.
Dr. Cogburn is editor of the Palgrave Macmillian book series on Information Technology and Global Governance. He is past president of the Information Technology and Politics section of the American political Science Association, and past president of the International Communication section of the International Studies Association. He is a founding member and past Vice Chair of the Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet).
Dr. Cogburn received his PhD and MA in Political Science (International Relations, Political Economy, Comparative Politics) from Howard University; and his BA in History (Africa) from the University of Oklahoma.
DEPUTY DIRECTOR
Dr. Filippo Trevisan is Associate Professor in the School of Communication at American University and Deputy Director of the AU Institute on Disability and Public Policy (IDPP). After working as a reporter for Italy's largest private news agency in Rome, he completed his PhD and worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. His research explores the impact of new media technologies on advocacy, activism, and political communication. Dr. Trevisan is interested in exploring how both elite and grassroots stakeholders use the Internet to influence debates about contested issues and affect policy decisions, including in combination with traditional protest tactics and strategic communication.
His work has focused in particular on the use of online media in the British and American disability rights movements. He also has a strong interest in comparative media analysis and has studied how voters use Google to find information about elections in the UK, the U.S., Italy, and Egypt. His research has been published in journals including Information, Communication & Society, First Monday, and Disability & Society.
Dr. Trevisan received his PhD in Political Communication and Public Policy from the University of Glasgow; MRes in Public Policy from the University of Glasgow; MSc in Political Communication from the University of Glasgow; and MA in International Relations from University of Trieste.