Natalia-Rozalia Avlona is a lawyer and Postdoctoral Researcher for the ERC-funded DataSpace project at the Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen. She recently completed her PhD in Computer Science at the University of Copenhagen as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow within the DCODE project. Her research focuses on the responsible development and deployment of AI systems in high-risk domains, particularly in healthcare.
She extensively employs qualitative methods, such as ethnography and action research, with the long-term aim of designing a transdisciplinary space of mutual elucidation between how policymakers envision and regulate data-driven technologies and how the established regulatory frameworks both facilitate and constrain the workflows of computer scientists and domain experts.
Natalia's academic background includes law studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (2006) and an LLM in Human Rights Law from King’s College London (2007). She also pursued coursework in the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London, and in the Department of Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art.
Specialising in the intersection of emerging technologies, law, and society, she has worked for over a decade on the legal and ethical implications of emerging technologies. She has held positions in several organisations and European research programmes across the UK, Belgium, Greece, and Cyprus, including the Future Emerging Technologies Unit (DG CONNECT, European Commission), the Royal College of Art, the University of Nicosia, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, the Organisation of Industrial Property in Greece, the General Secretariat for Gender Equality, and the Greek Universities Network (GUnet). Before joining the University of Copenhagen, she was a Research Fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European & Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP), where she led the AMIF ATHENA research programme.
From 2019 to 2021, she also worked as a researcher for the Horizon 2020 project TARGET: Taking a Reflexive Approach to Gender Equality for Institutional Transformation.
She is currently a member of the Management Committee of the Cost Action Platform Work Inclusion Living Lab (P-WILL). and previously of the COST Action From Sharing to Caring (CA16121). In 2020, she co-founded the techno-feminist hacking network Restorative Infrastructures.
Beyond her academic work, Natalia is deeply committed to feminist ethics and activism in the commons and Social and Solidarity Economy. She has run workshops on Wikipedia for the Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums (GLAM) sector; co-organised feminist workshops on FOSS at Hackerspace.gr (Django Girls Athens), techno-feminist festivals (/EtcAthens), and (un)conferences on the commons. She has also delivered seminars on gender and open technologies, as well as gender and SSE. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she co-initiated Emergency Making Aid, a local bottom-up initiative of makers, architects, and researchers that produced and donated 3D-printed protective equipment to public hospitals.