Plixavra Vogiatzoglou

Looking forward to discussing my book with the amazing Delphine Dogot, Kristina Irion, and Maša Galič on 15 December. Join us in person or online through the link below!

Google, the world’s largest search engine operating three in four smartphones, has played Brussels like a fiddle – shaping laws, silencing rivals, and calling it "innovation". The chart shows how Big Tech bankrolls Brussels’ top think tanks.

Read our latest story here: www.ftm.eu/articles/goo...

Poster voor demonstratie op 5 oktober

CfP: TALS Academy in Advanced Legal Research Applications close 23 August 2025; Workshop 8-12 December 2025. The Transnational Association of Legal Scholars (TALS) is a group of legal

The Transnational Association of Legal Scholars has reopened its Academy - this is a week-long, intensive, online training for a selected 16 grad students. criticallegalthinking.com/2025/07/14/c...

Suspending the right to asylum and cutting food rations is not "getting tough" but a blatant breach of EU law. The @ec.europa.eu should of course intervene, but @vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu will not bother an ally with infringement proceedings. www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2025/07/10/g...

Seeking bulldozer drivers to demolish Gaza: how a genocide is being outsourced | Arwa Mahdawi The systematic destruction of Gaza is hardly a secret. Now, the IDF is posting Facebook ads for bulldozer operators to help demolish the strip

“The goal [is] to concentrate the entire Gazan population into the remaining 25% of the territory and to debilitate them to the extent that they either flee, are permitted to leave or simply wither away. And western govts and big tech are happy to facilitate it.”

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Frontex unlawfully shared thousands of people's personal data with Europol Under the banner of fighting migrant smuggling, Frontex has collected, and unlawfully siphoned to Europol, personal data for years—quietly drawing thousands of migrants, as well as EU citizens aiding ...

Cross-border investigation: @lemonde.fr, @elpais.com, and @netzpolitik.org reveal how, between 2016 and 2023, @frontex.bsky.social illegally transferred the personal data of over 13,000 people to Europol.

Published by @wearesolomon.bsky.social 👇

wearesolomon.com/mag/format/i...

Civil Society Open Letter in Response to Recent Spyware Abuse Cases in the EU On behalf of the Spyware Coordination Group, a coalition of civil society and journalist organisations advocating for transparency, accountability, and the protection of fundamental rights in relation...

Journalists and rights defenders in Europe are under spyware surveillance.

We join civil society in calling on the EU to act. Now.

Spyware like Graphite is too invasive to comply with human rights.
www.ecpmf.eu/civil-societ...

a couple of hours before my keynote, I went through an intense negotiation with the organisers (for over a hour) where we went through my slides and had to remove anything that mentions 'Palestine' 'Israel' and replace 'genocide' with 'war crimes'

1/

UPDATE: it's now 187 NGOs & trade unions urging suspension of the #EU - #Israel Association Agreement.

Credible findings of genocide & apartheid are NOT compatible with the human rights clause - nor is inaction.

EU ministers failed on June 20. They must not fail again on July 15.

#SuspendTheDeal

Inside the Franco-German plot to kill Europe’s ethical supply chain law The due diligence law was meant to bring EU-style protections to global supply chains. Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz helped all but kill it.

Friedrich Merz's arrival as German chancellor in May rekindled the fading Franco-German love affair — and the lovebirds have already found a shared interest: killing Europe's ethical supply chain dream.

YouTube video by ENA Institute for Alternative Policies Workshop | Greece’s data infrastructures as a site of political contestation

If you missed our #facct2025 CRAFT session on the "Hidden costs of digital sovereignty: Greece’s data infrastructures as a site of political contestation", it is now online available online!

youtu.be/Xb2UhtBsr2w

"Israel’s use of force against Iran is, on the facts as we know them, almost certainly illegal."

Big Tech quietly sponsors Trump’s military parade party Amazon, Oracle and Coinbase are top sponsors, while Meta’s involvement is unclear.

I call that (confirming) a market expansion
www.theverge.com/policy/68569...

Keir Starmer Used Dodgy Figures to Claim 4,000 New Jobs. In Fact, It’s Only 400 | Novara Media Labour’s plans to kickstart productivity are based on massively inflated numbers from a US private equity giant. Why is the prime minister doing Blackstone's PR? Polly Smythe reports.

novaramedia.com/2025/06/04/k...

Data centres will not create the thousands of jobs gov would like us to think they will.

Good news! Though once again charging individuals without accompanying structural changes..

Greek coastguards charged over 2023 migrant shipwreck Seventeen coastguards have been charged by a Greek naval court over the deadliest migrant boat disaster in the Mediterranean Sea for a decade.

Greek coast guards charged over migrant deaths
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Two accepted panels on Palestine were targeted after the preliminary programme was published online: Technologies at war: The role of tech companies and the EU in facilitating war crimes and genocide in Gaza, and Cyber Surveillance and Data Violence in Palestine: Protection, Practice, and Legality. CPDP approached the panel organisers and advised them to remove the word ‘genocide’ in the titles and descriptions, including references to crimes and violations of international law. CPDP then unjustifiably singled out these two panels with a disclaimer that read: “The text of this panel represents the opinions of the Panel Organiser and not those of CPDP. The case before the ICJ regarding the categorization of Israel’s activities in Gaza has yet to be decided.” Upon the request of the panels’ organisers, the disclaimer was removed. Discussions about human rights abuses, atrocity crimes, or genocide do not require a court ruling to be legitimate. At the core of international law and human rights work is prevention — a responsibility that also extends to private companies, which are expected to identify and mitigate risks of contributing to such abuses. These obligations are clear under the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The International Court of Justice (ICJ), in its provisionary measures orders, affirmed the responsibility of state and non-state actors to take actions in the face of a clear and imminent risk of genocide. Multiple UN bodies and experts, genocide scholars, and leading human rights organisations have already categorised the Israeli conduct in Gaza as genocide that has met all legal elements of this crime.

"We were excited to have a panel accepted on the role of technology in genocide in Gaza at this year’s Computers, Privacy & Data Protection (CPDP) conference in Brussels. However, CPDP then requested that Access Now & others remove the word “genocide” from panel titles & descriptions. We declined."

One more week to submit your abstracts for Gikii 2025 🎉

When workers send emails including words related to Israel’s war on Gaza, messages are delayed as much as 45 minutes or never arrive at all. interc.pt/3H5WAtI

"Which is to say, The Pitt’s literalism may be its superpower. In the face of mass institutional acquiescence to fascism, there’s a lot to be said for loudly asserting the value of radical empathy and social justice."

Democracy and AI The role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in democratic societies is an ongoing concern for many researchers, albeit for different reasons. During this event, we will explore the often illegitimate but not illegal applications of AI in democratic practices, focusing on the role of the news media, political decision-making, and policy. 

TODAY 📣 Join @plixavra.bsky.social, @hannescools.bsky.social at SPUI25 to learn more about the role of #AI 🤖 in democratic societies. You can also join online at 4 pm bit.ly/437yJBv @uvahumanities.bsky.social #Democracy

Techbedrijf aan de leiband van Trump – kan Nederland nog wel zonder Microsoft? Techgigant Microsoft moet naar Donald Trumps pijpen dansen. De Nederlandse afhankelijkheid van Microsoft-systemen wordt in toenemende mate riskant, zoals blijkt bij het Internationaal Strafhof.

When Trump sanctioned the ICC, Microsoft cut off services to the court. Now imagine our government, hospitals, and power grid running on Microsoft Cloud. Digital self-determination isn't abstract—it's about whether our society functions when geopolitics shifts. #CloudRisks #DigitalResilience

European Parliament LIBE votes on the #Europol reform report next week Tuesday, 20 May.

MEPs 👏must 👏vote 👏against the expansion of Europol’s surveillance powers!

Read & share the detailed #ProtectNotSurveil position paper now:
➡️ protectnotsurveil.eu

Around 100.000 people have been demonstrating in The Hague against our government's stance towards, and complicity in, Israel's genocide in Gaza. This is huge for two reasons: (1) the largest demonstration in 20 yrs; (2) The Netherlands is traditionally pro-Israel.

Picture: nos.nl/artikel/2567...

Join us for a lively discussion on #AI in democratic societies! Looking forward to talking about risks and regulation through the example of #predictivepolicing and what the implications are for the EU's #digitalsovereignty. Link below 👇

Greece: Media Freedom in Crisis Greece faces a media freedom crisis as a result of actions and failures by the Greek government, threatening democracy and the rule of law, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

Today, @hrw.org publishes a new report on the media freedom crisis in #Greece. The pervasive constraints on journalism are fostering a climate of self-censorship, harming democracy & the rule of law

“From Bad to Worse: The Deterioration of Media Freedom in Greece” www.hrw.org/news/2025/05...

How should legal education respond to AI? Together with 11 UCL Laws colleagues, this paper is our vision for the sector. It's rooted in academic integrity, fundamental competences, and concerns around impacts on learning to learn and intellectual risk taking. (🧵)

discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10...

A poster saying scholars against scholasticide

A group of people sitting silently in an atrium

A group of academics sit in silence in an atrium

A group of people sitting silently silently in an atrium

Another Thursday, another UvA sit-in against the genocide in Gaza, for divestment, and for freedom and justice in Palestine!