Carolina Polito is an Associate Research Assistant at CEPS, in the Global Governance, Regulation, Innovation, Digital Economy Unit, more specifically in the Cybersecurity@CEPS Program.
Her main expertise is in the field of cybersecurity and Internet governance, acquired through different work experiences in European and non-European research institutes over the past two years.
With regard to cybersecurity, she contributed, among others, to the CEPS Task Force on AI and Cybersecurity bringing attention to the market, technical, ethical, and governance challenges posed by the intersection of AI and cybersecurity. Also, she contributed to a study on the proliferation of cyber weapons for the Istituto Affari Internazionali. Finally, she carried out a study for the Center for Quantitative Research of the ASAN Institute for Policy Studies dealing with the evolution of North Korea cyber menace. With regard to Internet governance, she has edited a book on Digital Geopolitics and contributed with a chapter in the book dealing with the rising of sovereignty claims in cyberspace. She has held lectures on the evolution of Internet governance in the context of the IAI training course “Technology and International Politics.” She has also written different articles and commentaries dealing with the governance of emerging digital technologies. Moreover, her master thesis has dealt with South Korea’s diplomatic stance towards the United States and China’s competition over Internet governance. She is also developing competencies in evaluation as she is part of the CEPS team currently conducting a study for DG CNECT for evaluating the existing legal and policy framework applicable to the security of network and information systems and for identifying new policy measures and/or concepts to be considered.
She has experience in qualitative research, as of conducting semi-structured interviews, case study research ,and focus group and offering background literature review. She has limited competencies in data gathering and analysis using Excel.
She holds a Master’s Degree cum Lude in International Relations from the University of Bologna and a Bachelor’s Degree cum Laude also from the University of Bologna, Forlì campus. She carried out an Erasmus+ Program at the Metropolitan University of Prague (MUP) – College of International Relations and College of International Business.
Mother tongue Italian, she is fluent in English and has some knowledge of French and Spanish.
