ACUNS 2023 Annual Meeting

Marzia Rango recently joined the UN Operations and Crisis Centre (UNOCC) in the UN Secretariat in New York as a Migration and Human Mobility Specialist. Prior to UNOCC, she led the work on data innovation and capacity-building at the Global Migration Data Analysis Centre (GMDAC) of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Berlin. She is the co-editor of the handbook Harnessing Data Innovation for Migration Policy (forthcoming, 2022), and IOM’s volume Migration in West and North Africa and across the Mediterranean (2020).

Martin Waehlisch leads the Innovation Cell in the Policy and Mediation Division of the UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (UN DPPA), an interdisciplinary team dedicated to exploring, piloting, and scaling new technologies, tools, and practices in conflict prevention, mediation and peacebuilding. He holds a PhD in International Law and recently published the edited volume “Rethinking Peace Mediation: Challenges of Contemporary Peacemaking Practice” (Bristol University Press 2021).

Ingmar Weber is an Alexander von Humboldt Professor in Artificial Intelligence at Saarland University. His interdisciplinary research looks at what non-traditional data sources can tell us about the offline world and society at large. Working closely with sociologists and demographers he has pioneered the use of online advertising data for complementing official statistics on international migration, digital gender gaps, and poverty. His work is regularly featured in UN reports, and analyses performed by his team have been used to improve operations by UN agencies and NGOs ranging from Colombia to the Philippines.

Julia Helmes is the Program Officer at the DWIH New York. She is responsible for all things event-related, including programming, planning and communications, as well as office management. Prior to joining the DWIH, Julia spent two years working for an arts non-profit in Boston, teaching visual art and creative writing, and working as an Outreach Coordinator. Julia studied literature at Barnard College, the Humboldt University in Berlin, and Trinity College Dublin where she graduated with an M.Phil. in Children’s Literature. She’s always on the lookout for a good story and thinking about ways to engage an audience.