Digital Rights Team

Burcu Kilic, Ph.D., Program Director, Digital Rights

Burcu Kilic, Ph.D., is a scholar, lawyer and digital rights advocate. Her understanding helps shape the thinking and strategies of policymakers, scholars and advocates. For example, when the new e-commerce trade agreements were first being negotiated, She was first to come out with analyses of the Trans-Pacific partnership (TPP), Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) and Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). She roots her technical and legal expertise in a profound desire to improve the welfare of humanity. During the main session at IGF 2017, Mexico’s former TPP negotiator told the room that “(…) [P]art of what we have in the TPP, as positive outcomes, are the responsibility of this person (Burcu Kilic)”.

She completed her Ph.D. at Queen Mary, University of London as a School of Law Fellow, where she taught International and Comparative Patent Law and Policy. She holds Masters degrees from University of London and Stockholm University in Intellectual Property Law and Law and Information Technology and a law degree from Ankara University. She is also a SARChI Research Fellow at Institute for Economic Research on Innovation, Tshwane University of Technology, South Africa.

Mai Sutton

Mai is an organizer and researcher for the digital rights program. She formerly worked with the Electronic Frontier Foundation as a global policy analyst and worked on several campaigns involving digital policy provisions in trade agreements. Ms. Sutton’s campaigns against the TPP garnered tens of thousands of supporters. She has organized several dozen events around the world involving academics and advocates in order to raise awareness and discuss the implications of the TPP’s digital policy provisions on human rights.