Dr. Melanie Garson
Cyber Policy Lead & Acting Director of Geopolitics,Tony Blair Institute for Global Change
Dr Melanie Garson is the Cyber Policy Lead and Acting Director of Geopolitics at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. Her work focuses on cyber policy, the geopolitics of the internet, the rise of tech companies as geopolitical actors, data governance as well as the intersection of emerging tech, foreign policy and diplomacy. She is also an Associate Professor in International Conflict Resolution & International Security in the Department of Political Science at University College London where she teaches about cyberwarfare and the future of conflict in the digital age, as well as International Negotiation.
Melanie is an accredited mediator and prior to joining UCL worked as a solicitor in the International Disputes department of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, covering Public International Law, International Arbitration, and International Corporate Investigations, as well as teaching mediation and negotiation techniques.
She has also worked as Director of Development and New Programmes for the Centre for Jewish Arab Economic Development (Israel), Director of Communications for Peaceworks LLC (New York), as well as for the People-to-People department of the Economic Cooperation Foundation (Israel), and the Education Programmes Department for the United Nations Association of the USA (NYC).
She received her PhD from University College London, and holds a Masters in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (Medford, MA), specialising in conflict resolution and negotiation. She holds a BA (Hons.) in Oriental Studies from Girton College, Cambridge. She also holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Law and is a solicitor under the Law Society of England and Wales.