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DIESL Annual Seminar 2026 — Oxford
The Digital Economic Security Lab (DIESL) held its Annual Seminar on 14–15 April 2026 at the Oxford Internet Institute, in Oxford, UK. The two-day event brought together DIESL researchers from Oxford, Aalto, and partner universities, featuring presentations on the political geography of data, digital dependence in public sector digital infrastructure, the politics of digital sovereignty,
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Digital Economic Security Seminar – Spring 2026
Organisers/Hosts: Vili Lehdonvirta, Philipp Riederle Sessions: Tuesdays, 1–2pm (UK time), during Oxford term time, via Zoom Participation: Open to researchers and students from any university or research institution. Please apply here if you would like to join the seminar sessions. Trinity Term 2026 About the Oxford–Aalto Digital Economic Security Seminar Today’s economies are critically dependent
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EERO LINDBOHM AND JOHAN VAN DER MEER JOIN DIESL
In March, Eero Lindbohm and Johan van der Meer joined DIESL as master thesis workers. Eero is a student of Aalto’s Master programme in Information Networks. His thesis deals with the analysis and mitigation of risks to “sovereign” cloud solutions. Johan is a student of Aalto’s Computer, Communication and Information Sciences Master programme. At DIESL,
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NEW POLICY BRIEF: EUROPE’S USE OF CLOUD COMPUTING FOR BORDER CONTROL
A new policy piece by Stefka Schmid has been published by the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs. Summary Big Tech companies provide cloud computing services to various actors worldwide, including Frontex, thereby shaping the governance of the EU’s external borders. Given that border control constitutes a safety-critical environment, the implementation of cloud computing should be
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PARTICIPATION IN AI GOVERNANCE IN MLOPS MEETUP HELSINKI
On April 7th, DIESL PhD student and team member Ana Paula Gonzalez Torres will take part in the MLOps Meetup. Ana Paula will contribute with her expertise in AI governance to the question of how to implement governance to AIOps/MLOps. The event is organised by the Helsinki MLOps Community and will take place at the
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NEW WORKING PAPER: MASTODON USER STUDY ON THE POTENTIALS AND LIMITS OF INTEROPERABILITY
A new paper titled “Does Digital Platform Interoperability Deliver on Its Expectations? Evidence from User Switching on Mastodon” by Philipp Riederle has been published on SocArXiv. Abstract Users of centralised digital platforms (e.g., X, Instagram, TikTok) have little choice but to accept incumbent providers’ conduct or forgo participation. Digital platform interoperability is widely proposed as
