Salerno Winter School 2025: Shaping the Future of Internet Governance

Last updated Mar 4, 2025

From February 24 to 28, the University of Salerno hosted the first edition of the Salerno Winter School on Internet Governance. The event, organized by the Internet & Communication Policy Center of the Department of Business Sciences – Management & Innovation Systems (DISA-MIS), brought together 22 young scholars from the United States, Canada, India, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Germany, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Estonia.

Participants attended an intensive 40-hour in-person program featuring lectures, seminars, and workshops on digital governance, engaging with topics such as network geopolitics, artificial intelligence governance, platform regulation, online human rights protection, digital sovereignty, disinformation, and cybersecurity policies.

The teaching activities were entrusted to a group of Italian and international professors from prestigious European research centers and international institutions involved in technology regulation and governance.

The initiative was supported by the United Nations University (UNU-CRIS), the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which manages domain names and IP addresses globally, the Moroccan Agency for Digitalization, and major international research networks on Internet governance.

“This experience has projected our research center onto the international stage,” said Professor Mauro Santaniello, director of the research center that organized the event. “We are part of a debate that is becoming increasingly relevant, especially due to growing geopolitical tensions and rivalries among technological powers. The discussions that took place in our classrooms over these days are at the top of the agenda in all chancelleries and international organizations. The challenges we will face in the coming years as a society, particularly in the technological field, require investments in education and moments of sharing that build bridges between different cultures and countries.”

“We are preparing a generation of young scholars who will be called upon to manage extremely complex processes,” said the School’s director, Professor Francesco Amoretti. “We believe that offering a transdisciplinary education on technology governance is a necessary challenge to ensure that innovation processes serve the interests of people and become drivers of peace and prosperity. The risk that digitalization may be absorbed into a logic of conflict and competition, including military competition, is high. The School is a cultural project that responds to this challenge.”

Further information about the School is available at:
https://www.internetpolicyresearch.eu/swing-2025/teaching-programme

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