Laura DeNardis


Laura DeNardis is an American author and a globally recognized scholar of Internet governance and technical infrastructure. She is a tenured Professor and the Interim Dean in the School of Communication at American University. DeNardis is an affiliated Fellow of the Yale Information Society Project at Yale Law School and served as its Executive Director from 2008-2011. She previously served as a Senior Fellow of the and the Director of Research for the . With a background in information technology engineering and a doctorate in Science and Technology Studies, her research studies the social and political implications of Internet technical architecture and governance. Domestically, she served as an appointed member of the U.S. Department of State Advisory Committee on International Communications and Information Policy during the Obama Administration. She has more than two decades of experience as an expert consultant in Internet Governance to Fortune 500 companies, foundations, and government agencies.
Her expertise and scholarship have been featured in Science Magazine, The Economist, NPR, New York Times, ABC news, Bloomberg, Time Magazine, Christian Science Monitor, Slate, Reuters, Forbes, The Atlantic, the Globe and Mail, Investor's Business Daily, and The Wall Street Journal.
In 2015 Laura DeNardis was elected as a member of the Cosmos Club in Washington, DC.

Early life and education

Laura DeNardis was born in New Haven, CT, in 1966. She is married to a finance executive Deborah Smith. DeNardis and Smith's was one of the first same sex marriages in Connecticut in 2008.
DeNardis earned a PhD in Science and Technology Studies from Virginia Tech, an MEng from Cornell University, an AB in Engineering Science from Dartmouth College, and was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from Yale Law School.
She resides in Washington, DC.

Books

DeNardis served as the Research Director of the Global Commission on Internet Governance ourinternet.org.
She is also the Senior Fellow of the .

Major Lectures and Presentations