HIKMA SUMMIT
OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
CONFERENCES AND GUESTS OF HSIR 2022
Strategic autonomy, strategic compass, security system, future Europe
(Thursday 12, 17.00-18.00)
Starting from the current Russian-Ukrainian crisis and the related developments and changes in security matters in the EU, let us try to understand what are the possible future scenarios of a European security system and the global strategies of the Union's international relations.
Natalie Tocci
Nathalie Tocci is director of the Institute of International Affairs, honorary professor at the University of Tübingen and Pierre Keller Visiting Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School. She was Special Adviser of the High Representative of the EU and Vice President of the European Commission Josep Borrell. As Special Adviser of the High Representative Federica Mogherini she worked on the drafting of the global strategy of the European Union and its implementation. He has been a director of Eni's Board of Directors since May 2020.
Cybersecurity:
A new era for Human Rights
(Thursday 12, 18.00-19.30)
What do you think when you hear the word "cyber security"? If the only images you can think of are hackers wearing black hoodies and spooky masks, this is the conference for you! With two highly qualified guests, we will try to go beyond some clichés about cybersecurity and investigate the great impact that cybersecurity also has on ordinary individuals and citizens, with a particular focus on the cybersecurity-human rights link.
Federica Merenda
Researcher in political philosophy at the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies. She also holds the position of expert consultant in "Ethics and human rights in artificial intelligence" at the Presidency of the Italian Council - Department for Digital Transformation and is also the scientific manager of the "Easy to tech" project at the COTEC foundation.
Katrin Nyman-Metcalf
Adjunct Professor of Communications Law at Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia. She has also been active in the global landscape - for more than 20 years now - as a consultant on legal issues related to information and communication technologies, as well as various other digital sectors including cyber security, e-governance, human rights in the digital context (such as freedom of expression to protect data). She has worked in more than 50 countries including war-torn nations and emerging states. boasts of numerous publications on issues related to law, technology, human rights in the digital world and on regional integration with a particular focus on non-European contexts.
Digital Currency:
A new geopolitical frontier
(Friday 13, 10.00-11.00)
In an age of constant change and evolution, everything is moving towards digital. In this process, money and payments are no exception. What are the differences between digital currencies and cryptocurrencies? What consequences should we expect from the geopolitical scenario? What is the digital euro, why is the ECB working on that project and how will it affect our lives? Through the presence of qualified guests such as Massimo Amato, Nicola Bilotta and Erwin Voloder, learn more about the nature of digital currencies and try to understand their role in geopolitical competition.
Nicola Bilotta
Nicola Bilotta is a senior researcher at the IAI where he deals with international political economy, digital economy and geofinance. He is also an adjunct professor at LUMSA University where he teaches "Digital DIplomacy: New Media and New Technologies in IR". He also worked as a senior research analyst at The Banker Research Team (Financial Times), with whom he still collaborates. He was co-editor of the volumes "The rise of tech giants. A game changer in global finance and politics" and "The (near) future of BDCs. Risks and opportunities for the global economy and society".
Massimo Amato
Massimo Amato teaches economic history, history of economic thought and history of the monetary and financial system at Bocconi University. He also served as a scientific advisor for complementary currency projects in France. His work currently focuses on the project of a European debt agency and on algorithmic methods for clearing systems. In addition to various articles published in international newspapers, he has also written several books such as "The enigma of money and the beginning of the economy" (2010), "The end of finance" (with Luca Fantacci, 2009) and "Per un handful of Bitcoin "(with L. Fantacci, 2016).
Erwin Voloder
Erwin Voloder has been actively employed in the Blockchain industry since 2017 first as the founder of a start-up in Canada and then as a researcher in Europe. He has a background as an economist with the European Commission and is currently a strategic consultant at the Eu Crypto Lead in Brussels. He is also a researcher with the Digital Euro Association and an economist for the European Blockchain Association. its expertise includes central bank digital currencies, which are actively used in EU working groups. His other knowledge includes monetary policy, market infrastructure and payments related to the political dimension of "tokenization".
Future of China-US relations
(Friday 13, 10.00-11.00)
Relations between states have been shaped and influenced by power and interests throughout history, but what are the consequences of the "second phase of globalization" we are currently witnessing? To predict possible future developments it is necessary to analyze the current state of the great powers in the international system. What do you know about the great competition of power? And what about the implications that the news will have on the relations between these powerful actors, such as China, the United States and Russia? What role will they play in the international community?
Robert Kaplan
Robert Kaplan is a bestselling author of twenty books on international affairs translated into many languages; among them: "Adriatic", "The good American", "The revenge of geography", "Asia's Cauldron", "Monsoon", "The coming anarchy" and "Balkan Ghosts". He holds the Robert-Strausz-Hupé Chair in Geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. For three decades he worked for The Atlantic magazine. He was a member of the Defense Policy Commission at the Pentagon and a member of the US Navy Executive Committee. Foreign Policy magazine has twice named him one of the world's top 100 thinkers.
Simone Dossi
Simone Dossi is a fixed-term researcher in international relations at the Department of International, Legal and Historical - Political Studies of the State University of Milan. In the past, he held visiting positions at Beijing University and Renmin University in China. He was also an associate researcher at the Istituto Affari Globali in Turin. He is the author of "Chinese routes. Maritime theaters and military doctrine", Milan, Università Bocconi Editore (2014) and "The power of generals. Civil and military in contemporary East Asia", Rome, Carocci (2017).
Ethics of AI
(Friday 13, 17.15-18.00)
Giulia Gentile
Giulia Gentile is a Fellow in Law at the LSE Law School. She joined the LSE Law School in 2021, having worked as a lecturer and researcher at Maastricht University and as a visiting lecturer at King's College London. She is co-editor of the first book on the role of non-doctrinal research methods in international legal scholarship (Edward Elgar, 2019) and her research has been published, among others, in the European Constitutional Law Review, the German Law Journal, European documents and the revision of European administrative law. Gentile is a licensed lawyer with the Italian Bar Association and has gained legal experience, among others, at the office of Judge Lucia Serena Rossi at the Court of Justice of the European Union and at the M&A Department of Clifford Chance (Milan). Her research focuses on EU constitutional law, data protection and the promotion of human rights in the digital society. She is particularly interested in regulating the right to free speech online, the use of AI in judicial systems, and protecting the right to a fair trial and effective remedy in AI-based courts.
Kate Vredenburgh
Kate Vredenburgh is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics. She deals with philosophy of social sciences, political philosophy and philosophy of technology, on themes that intersect with ethics, epistemology and metaphysics. Much of her research and teaching interact with other disciplines, such as economics and information technology. One of the goals of her research is to understand how basic regulatory commitments affect modeling in the social sciences and computer science and to reflect on how they should be applied. She is also interested in moral and political questions about technology, organizations and the economy.
Role of China in Latin America and
the Caribbean
(Friday 13, 18.00-19.00)
What is the role of China in Latin America and the Caribbean? This constantly evolving scenario in international relations calls into question the South-South model of cooperation undertaken by Beijing in the Southern Cone. With the help of Professor Margaret Myers we will try to understand the role of Beijing in this region in order to understand what objectives the China and how it will reach them.
Margaret Myers
She is director of the "Asia and Latin America Program" for Inter-American Dialogue. She boasts several publications on China's relations with Latin America and the Caribbean. The two volumes " The Political Economy of China-Latin America Relations" and "The Changing Currents of Trans-Pacific Integration: China, the TPP, and Beyond" in co-edition with Dr. Carol Wise and Dr. Adrian respectively were published in 2016. She testified before the House and Senate Foreign Affairs Committee on China-Latin America relations and appears regularly in major national and international media. Myers previously worked as a Latin American and China analyst for the US Department of Defense. She was a member of the International Relations Council and in 2018 was identified by Global Americans as one of the "new generation of public intellectuals".
The rise of Metaverse and
its geopolitical implications
(Saturday 14, 10.30-12.00)
With the support of Fabio Vanorio and Francesco Marradi, Hikma will discuss the geopolitical implications of the Metaverse. This new concept of digital space will soon become the main topic of debate, at the academic level as well as during our daily life, and finally it will also affect governments and decision-makers: the Metaverse will certainly influence many aspects of governance and security at the national level and international. China, the United States and many other players are increasing research and testing efforts within this virtual world for military and study purposes. Due to its transnational nature, the problems and challenges of the Metaverse will form the basis of international politics in a future "new digital world order". Will the Metaverse change our system of international relations? How can it be regulated? What is the role of high-tech companies in this dynamic progress? Does the Metaverse represent the next step in the digital world or could it suggest a major threat? Don't miss one of the world's first conferences on the Metaverse related to geopolitics, see you there!
Fabio Vanorio
Fabio Vanorio is an executive at the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, he works as Tech Lead at the Policy Planning Unit of the Directorate General of Public Diplomacy. His work focuses on the influence that new challenges from Emerging Technologies have on foreign policy, the state of the 4IR (Fourth Industrial Revolution), digital authoritarianism and consequent threats to democratic regimes.
He is a national security contributor at the NATO Defense College Foundation and the Italian Institute for Strategic Studies "Niccolò Machiavelli", thanks to his previous experience as a senior intelligence analyst and his expertise in NATO and the EU.
He has a degree in Economics and he is specialized in Applied Econometrics in Rome, he pursue a Master of Arts in Government and Politics from Saint John University in New York.
Francesco Marradi
Francesco Marradi is Lieutenant Colonel of the Corp of Engineers of the Italian Air Force. Enrolled in the 1984, after a long duty at the operational line, since the 2000 has been assigned in international programmes area, covering roles in logistic engineering, international contract negotiations, now as Programme Manager of Eurofighter F-2000 Typhoon at the Air General Staff in Rome, where he also is involved in applications of Emerging Technologies for future programmes.
Space Race: geopolitical challenges
of the 21st century
(Saturday 14, 17.00-18.00)
We are pleased to announce that two highly qualified experts such as Marcello Spagnulo, Scientific Advisor for Limes Geopolitical Review and President of the Marscenter, and Antonino Salmeri, Policy and Advocacy Coordinator of Space Generation Advisory Council, will participate as speakers at our conference "Space Race: geopolitical challenges of the 21st century ". While Antonino Salmeri will introduce us to space law, focusing on the rules and sources of law that shape interstate relations in space, Marcello Spagnulo will delve into the geopolitical challenges that space exploration entails.
Marcello Spagnulo
Scientific consultant for the magazine Limes Geopolitica and president of the Marscenter company based in Naples. He enjoys a long career in the aerospace and defense sectors, having worked in prestigious institutions such as the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency, as well as in various companies in Italy and France. He is professor of the master of Space and Systems at the "La Sapienza" University of Rome. he has published various books on space and in 2021 he published his latest book "Geopolitics of Space Exploration" with the publisher Springer-Praxis.
Antonino Salmeri
He is a space lawyer specializing in lunar governance and space resource activities who is currently working as a PhD researcher in space law at the University of Luxembourg. He already has three degrees and is about to complete a doctorate on the regulatory aspects and application options of space mining. Spagnulo holds various key positions among the space community, including: political coordinator of the Space Generation Advisory Council. He is a member of the Global Expert Group on Sustainable Lunar Activities and the International Institute of Space Law
Feminist AI: the Gender Gap
in the era of Data Deluge
(Saturday 14, 18.00-19.30)
But what does feminism have to do with AI ?! Don't scroll down and listen to us. Who, what and what data is telling our modershen data story? Data's story depends as much on what has been omitted as it is on what has been done. And our data story begins with the consistent omission of women, in medical studies, just to name one. The consequences for equality are obvious, but these defaults are so normalized that we don't even notice them. Yet they have been shown to harm and lead to deadly consequences. Our data is incomplete because half or much more than half of the population is missing. Caitlin Kraft-Buchman will introduce us to the problem of the gender gap in AI and guide us through its relevant implications for equality.
Caitlin Kraft-Buchman
Caitlin Kraft-Buchman is the CEO / founder of Women at the Table and co-founder of Alliance for Inclusive Algorithms. Women at the Table, founded in 2015, is a growing global CSO for gender equality and democracy based in Geneva focused on advancing feminist systems change by exercising leverage points in technology, economics, sustainability and in democratic governance using the prism of technology, innovation and artificial intelligence. Caitlin is also co-founder of International Gender Champions, founded in 2015, with headquarters in Geneva and hubs in New York, Vienna, Nairobi, Paris and The Hague, a leadership network of female and male decision makers breaking down gender barriers. for system change. The Alliance for Inclusive Algorithms, founded in 2019, is a global coalition of technologists, activists and academics that advocate inclusive AI and affirmative action for algorithms so that we move closer to creating racial and gender equality in a world where machine learning does not already link partial system in our future.
Digital silk road
(Sunday 15, 11.00-12.00)
Is China creating a separate Sino-centric Internet between its neighbors and BRI member nations? Will the world be divided into different Internet areas? How do you study the Digital Silk Road and its effects, given the complexity and the layers that make up the "Internet" or, even more vaguely, the "digital world"? While the BRI infrastructure projects are better known, the impact of a "Chinese Internet" extending from infrastructure to hardware, software and services is less visible and more difficult to analyze. We explore the consequences of the Digital Silk Road from a different perspective, between surveillance and development.
Elisa Oreglia
Professor Elisa Oreglia is a senior lecturer in Global Digital Cultures, affiliated with the Lau China Institute. She deals with the adoption, adaptation and use of digital technologies between different communities in Asia and in the global South in general.
Elisa Oreglia
Ashwin is a Lecturer in Global Digital Cultures at King’s College London. He an ethnographer of Internet infrastructure, studying the technologies and technical communities involved in the operation of the global Internet. He holds a Ph.D. in Information Management and Systems from the UC Berkeley School of Information. Prior to his doctoral work, he spent a decade as a programmer and technical architect in companies such as Adobe Systems and Sun Microsystems.