Graduate Research Colloquium on May 3 and May 4 - distinguished guest Ron Deibert

Graduate Research Colloquium

Carla DeMarco

UofT Mississauga’s Vice-Dean Graduate Office, in collaboration with UTM Library and UTMAGS, will be holding its annual UTM Graduate Research Colloquium. This colloquium aims to highlight graduate student and postdoctoral fellow research across our campus and across all academic disciplines. This special event will provide the opportunity to showcase their work to the greater UTM community.

Register Here for Ron Deibert's Talk (Virtual)

The Colloquium will be held over 2 afternoons:

Tuesday, May 3rd, Poster Presentation, from 3:00 – 5:00 pm, in the IB Atrium (refreshments will be served during poster presentation) 

and

Wednesday, May 4th, Oral Presentations will be held from 2:00 – 4:00 pm, in IB150.

Following the oral presentations at 4:00 pm, we have a special  guest speaker, Ronald Deibert, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affair and Public Policy, UofT, who will give a talk titled, Tracking the Global Spread and Harms of Digital Espionage.

Political struggles in and through the global Internet and related technologies are entering into a particularly dangerous phase for openness, security, and human rights. A growing number of governments and private companies have turned to "offensive" operations, with means ranging from sophisticated and expensive to home-grown and cheap. A large and largely unregulated market for commercial surveillance technology is finding willing clientele among the world's least accountable regimes. Powerful spyware tools are used to infiltrate civil society networks, targeting the devices of journalists, human rights defenders, minority movements, and political opposition, often with lethal consequences. Drawing from the last decade of research of the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, I will provide an overview of these disturbing trends and discuss some pathways to repairing and restoring the Internet as a sphere that supports, rather than diminishes, human rights.

Ronald J. Deibert is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto. The Citizen Lab undertakes interdisciplinary research at the intersection of global security, ICTs, and human rights. The research outputs of the Citizen Lab are routinely covered in global media, including over two dozen reports receiving front page coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post, and other media over the last decade. Deibert is the author of Black Code: Surveillance, Privacy, and the Dark Side of the Internet (Random House: 2013),  and RESET: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society (House of Anansi, 2020) as part of the CBC Massey Lecture series. In 2013, he was appointed to the Order of Ontario and awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee medal, for being “among the first to recognize and take measures to mitigate growing threats to communications rights, openness and security worldwide.”

To attend the livestream of Professor Deibert’s talk, please register at https://uoft.me/7Tx. Deadline to register is Wednesday, May 4th, by NOON.

A reception and awards ceremony will follow right after Professor Deibert’s talk in the IB Atrium at 5 pm on May 4th.