Cambridge Disinformation Summit (2025)

Scientific Committee members

Henry Ajder
Founder, Latent Space and Intellectual Forum
Senior Research Associate, University of Cambridge Jesus College
Latent Space

Brad Badertscher
Deloitte Professor of Accountancy
University of Notre Dame Mendoza College of Business

Matthew Baum
Marvin Kalb Professor of Global Communications
Harvard Kennedy School

Beth Blankespoor
Professor of Accounting and Marguerite Reimers Endowed Faculty Fellow
University of Washington Foster School of Business

Emma Briant
Associate Professor of News and Political Communication
Monash University

Hui Chen
Professor of Accounting
University of Zurich Department of Business Administration

Yonca Ertimur
Senior Associate Dean for Faculty
Tandean Rustandy Esteemed Professor
University of Colorado Leeds School of Business

Stefan Feuerriegel
Professor of Artificial Intelligence
Head of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence in Management
LMU Munich School of Management and Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics, and Statistics

Todd Henderson
Michael J Marks Professor of Law
University of Chicago Law School

Alan Jagolinzer
Professor of Financial Accounting
Co-Director of the Cambridge Centre for Financial Reporting and Accountability
University of Cambridge Judge Business School

Jessica Montgomery
Executive Director, AI@Cam
Executive Director of the Cambridge Accelerate Programme for Scientific Discovery
University of Cambridge Department of Computer Science and Technology

Gina Neff
Executive Director, Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy
University of Cambridge Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy

Safiya Noble
David O Sears Presidential Endowed Chair of Social Sciences
Professor of Gender Studies, African American Studies, and Information Studies
University of California at Los Angeles School of Education and Information Sciences

Daniel Ralph
Professor of Operations Research
Director of the Centre for Risk Studies
University of Cambridge Judge Business School

RA Rogers
Professor of New Media and Digital Culture
University of Amsterdam Faculty of Humanities

Yoel Roth
Vice President Trust and Safety
Match Group

Sunita Sah
Professor of Management Studies
Cornell University SC Johnson College of Business

Jake Shapiro
Professor of Politics and International Affairs
Princeton University School of Public and International Affairs

Tali Sharot
Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience
University College London Affective Brain Lab

Eric So
Sloan Distinguished Professor of Global Economics and Management
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management

Kate Starbird
Associate Professor of Human Centered Design and Engineering
University of Washington Department of Human Centered Design and Engineering

David Stillwell
Professor of Computational Social Science
Director of the Psychometrics Centre
University of Cambridge Judge Business School

Dan Taylor
Arthur Andersen Professor of Accounting
Director of the Wharton Forensic Analytics Lab
University of Pennsylvania Wharton School

Sander van der Linden
Professor of Social Psychology in Society
University of Cambridge Department of Psychology

Regina Wittenberg Moerman
Accounting Circle Professor of Accounting
University of Southern California Marshall School of Business

Keynote introduction: “Social Norms and Harassment”

Deborah Prentice

Vice-Chancellor, University of Cambridge

Read more about Deborah

Professor Deborah Prentice became the University of Cambridge’s 347th Vice-Chancellor on 1 July 2023.

An eminent psychologist, Professor Prentice carried out her academic and administrative career at Princeton University, which she first joined in 1988. She rose through the academic ranks and took on administrative responsibilities of increasing scope, chairing the Department of Psychology for 12 years, serving as Dean of Faculty for 3 years, and then serving 6 years as Provost, with primary responsibility for all academic, budgetary, and long-term planning issues.

Her academic expertise is in the study of social norms that govern human behaviour – particularly the impact and development of unwritten rules and conventions, and how people respond to breaches of those rules. She has edited 3 academic volumes and published more than 50 articles and chapters, and she has specialised in the study of domestic violence, alcohol abuse and gender stereotypes.

Keynote speakers

Nina Jankowicz

CEO, The American Sunlight Project

Adjunct Professor, Syracuse University Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs

Read more about Nina

Nina Jankowicz is the CEO of The American Sunlight Project, and an adjunct professor at the Syracuse University Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

In 2022, Nina was named by President Biden’s administration as the Executive Director for the Disinformation Governance Board, US Department of Homeland Security. Nina advises many policy institutions and is a prolific author for prominent outlets like the New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic. She is also the author of “How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict”.

In naming her one of the “100 Most Influential People in AI 2023”, Time Magazine reported that “hours into her appointment, [Nina] became the target of a sustained disinformation campaign herself… trolls on the internet waged continuous attacks that included allegations that she was transgender and infertile. Prominent Republicans and Fox News… derisively dubbed the board a ‘ministry of truth’. Jankowicz eventually resigned, and the US government disbanded the board just 3 weeks after it was first announced. Yet the attacks continued…[including] deepfake porn videos featuring her official US portrait.”

Access Nina's LinkedIn profile

Yoel Roth

Vice President of Trust and Safety, Match Group

Read more about Yoel

Yoel Roth is the Vice President of Trust and Safety at Match Group, a Nonresident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the Knight Visiting Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg School for Communication.

Yoel previously served as the Head of Trust and Safety at Twitter before and during that platform’s transition to new ownership. Yoel penned a late-2023 essay in the New York Times that documented how politically-charged responses to his work at Twitter incited significant personal security concerns—and represent a strategic intervention against online trust and safety efforts.

“Following the violence of Jan. 6, 2021, I helped make the call to ban [the former U.S. President Trump’s] account from Twitter altogether… Backed by fans on social media, Mr. Trump publicly attacked me… Private individuals — from academic researchers to employees of tech companies — are increasingly the targets of lawsuits, congressional hearings and vicious online attacks… [for] their desired effect: universities are cutting back on efforts to quantify abusive and misleading information spreading online. Social media companies are shying away from making… difficult decisions.”

Access Yoel's LinkedIn profile

Marianna Spring

Disinformation and Social Media Correspondent, BBC

Read more about Marianna

Marianna Spring is the BBC’s first disinformation and social media correspondent and an award-winning journalist. She presents podcasts and documentaries investigating disinformation and social media for BBC Radio 4 podcasts, as well as for BBC Panorama and BBC Three. She is also one of the presenters of the BBC’s Americast podcast. In 2022, she was named the British Press Guild’s Audio Presenter of the year and Royal Television Society Innovation winner. Her first book, Among the Trolls: My Journey Through Conspiracyland, was published in 2024 by Atlantic.

Access Marianna's LinkedIn profile

Call for papers

The Scientific Committee is pleased to announce a call for papers for the Cambridge Disinformation Summit.

Papers from any discipline or research methods will be considered that relate to the Summit’s theme, “Research on the efficacy of disinformation interventions”.

Submissions will be considered that explore potential interventions that might include, but are not limited to:

• governance frameworks
• understanding of and potential interventions that relate to disinformation actors
• understanding of and potential interventions that relate to disinformation incentives
• understanding of and potential interventions that relate to dissemination channels
• understanding of and potential interventions that relate to targeted vulnerable audiences
• accountability for harms from disinformation campaigns
• viability of technology to support interventions

10 to 12 papers will be selected by the scientific committee to be invited for presentation at the events in Cambridge UK.

Priority will be given to newer working papers that can both inform and be informed by the Summit’s interdisciplinary audience.

The call for papers will be open from 25 August 2024 through 11:59 PM BST on 25 October 2024.

Authors will be notified about their paper’s final selection status by the third week of December 2024.

For more information, email CFRA@jbs.cam.ac.uk.

The 2025 Cambridge Disinformation Summit is hosted by: the Cambridge Centre for Financial Reporting and Accountability, the Cambridge Psychometrics Centre, University of Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab, the University of Notre Dame Mendoza College of Business, and the University of Zurich Accounting Faculty Group.