Kristina Irion

Kristina Irion is Assistant Professor at the Department of Public Policy and Research Director, Public Policy, with the Center for Media and Communications Studies (CMCS) at Central European University. She is a qualified lawyer, earned her PhD degree from Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg, Germany, and holds a Masters degree in Information Technology and Telecommunications Law from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK. Before joining CEU in 2007, she was a part time counsel at the data protection officer in Berlin (Berlin Officer for Data Protection and Freedom of Information) and worked as Senior Regulatory Counsel for a German mobile phone network operator. Kristina also gained working experience as a trainee at the European Commission in Brussels and was a visiting fellow at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, EPIC in Washington.

Her research centers around Information Society policies, in particular regulation and policy of audiovisual media and electronic communications, Internet governance and information privacy protection. She has published in German and English; her doctoral thesis on Wholesale Access to Electronic Communications Networks under EC Competition Law was published in 2005. In the Master of Arts in Public Policy programme she contributes to the course portfolio of the Media, Information and Communications Policy specialization. Since 2011, member of the group of experts of the Center for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom (CMPF) at European University Institute, Florence.

Kristina implemented three collaborative and one individual research project. Between 2009 and 2011, under the European Commission's Fundamental Rights and Citizenship program she contributed to two research projects on privacy. In 2010, as part of a European consortium under the lead of the Hans Bredow Institute in Hamburg she was the key public policy exert in a study for the European Commission on Indicators for independence and efficient functioning of audiovisual media services regulatory bodies (INDIREG). In 2010/2011, she had been a consultant to the OECD Working Party on Information Security and Privacy tasked with drafting a background report on Protecting Children Online, Risks Faced By Children Online and Policies to Protect Them, and developing Policy Principles. Currently, she is the Scientific Advisor to a new collaborative research project which studies the development of independent and functional media institutions in the Western Balkan countries.