Discover the profile

Freitas, Christiana

Full Professor in the Graduate Program at the School of Communication (FAC), the Graduate Program in Governance and Innovation in Public Policy (PPGIPP), and the undergraduate program in the Department of Public Policy Management (GPP) at UnB. She holds a postdoctoral degree in Artificial Intelligence for Public Policy from Sciences Po, Bordeaux, France (2025–2026) and in Public Policy and Digital Governance from GovLab, New York University (2018).

She served two terms (four years) as Head of the Department of Public Policy Management at UnB (2021–2025). Founder and researcher at the National Institute of Science and Technology in Digital Democracy (INCT.DD). Researcher at the Research Group on Government, Administration, and Public Policy (GIGAPP, Spain). Leader of the research group on State, Regulation, Internet, and Society (GERIS). College Member of the International Public Policy Association.

She holds a Ph.D. in the Sociology of Science and Technology from the University of Brasília and the Open University, England (2003).

She has experience in the areas of public sector innovation, digital democracy, digital rights, digital governance, political communication, internet regulation, sociology of science and technology, communication, artificial intelligence, and public policy.

Her primary research interests include network analysis for political participation; democratic innovations in Latin America and the Caribbean; regulatory policies governing the use of digital media; open networks for knowledge production and dissemination; knowledge commons as drivers of innovation and public value creation; evaluation of government programs and public policies; and the democratization of knowledge in networked societies.

Key concepts explored in her research and publications include digital political participation, knowledge commons, democratic innovation, digital governance, technological-informational capital, digital capital, and digital sovereignty.

Universities

Cuias

Research

Communication, Data Sciences, Geography, Public Policy, Science and Technology Studies, Sociology

Critical Internet Governance

communication rights, community networks, decoloniality, digital democracy, internet governance, internet regulation

Communication, Data Sciences, Public Policy, Science and Technology Studies, Sociology

Critical AI Studies

AI ethics, Artificial Intelligence, Black Knowledges, critical AI studies, data sovereignty, decoloniality, Indigenous Knowledges, internet governance, technodiversity

Events

Pluriversity Abya Yala’s Second Anticolonial Cuia in Campinas-Limeira

The Risk and Resilience Geography Laboratory at the School of Applied Sciences at UNICAMP, Pluriversity Abya Yala, Casa Tainã, and the Digital Development Center of the Mocambos Network invited students and faculty to participate in a workshop on code ethnography. In the workshop the facilitators guided participants through multiple dimensions of code ethnography, applying the method to a piece of code selected by the participants themselves.

Pluriversity Abya Yala’s Second Anticolonial Cuia in Manaus

The Second Gathering of Amazonian Bowls – Afro-Indigenous Women and Countercolonial Experimentations, under the theme "Crossings, Weavings, Communication Challenges for Life," is committed to bringing women together to reflect on violent and nonviolent communication, engage in dialogue about the importance of knowledge exchange, and practice spirituality from feminine, feminist, and Amazonian perspectives.

Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR)

Panel: Regenerative Infrastructures: Indigenous technological autonomy and community networks in Mexico. In a global digital ecosystem dominated by data extraction, Indigenous communities in Mexico demonstrate that technological infrastructures are constantly disputed based on community and “communal” values, where communal reflects “the way of living and thinking” of the Indigenous peoples, or the comunalidad (Martínez Luna, 2015, p. 44).

Association of Internet Researchers

Code Ethnography: A Practical Workshop for Internet Researchers. Code ethnography is a method for examining code as a socio-technical actor, considering its social, political, and economic implications within the context of digital infrastructures (Rosa, 2022). The method aims to take the role of code seriously, allowing us to enroll code ethnographically in our research by examining it as language and identifying its grammar.

Critical Internet Governance Symposium

The goal of this symposium is to radically reimagine the future of Internet governance (IG) as a field of study through an anti-colonial lens. This proposal arises from the urgent recognition that IG, both as a practice and as a discipline, has historically been shaped by Western frameworks that marginalize other forms of knowledge and existence, weakening the agency of historically silenced communities and their epistemologies.

Writing Ground

The Writing Ground is a weekly space at the Abya Yala Pluriversity dedicated to nurturing projects that take shape through writing. The initiative sets aside a time in our schedules when we can be fully engaged with our writing needs. We meet every Monday morning. People from different places and territories in Abya Yala (the Americas) gather online and write.

Latin American Studies Association (LASA)

The Pluriversity will participate in the Latin American Studies Association conference in Paris (May 26–30), presenting the panel “Pluriversities and Knowledge Production in Abya Yala” on May 29. The panel brings together scholars and Indigenous perspectives to explore alternative forms of knowledge production, self-determination, and the role of pluriversities in challenging dominant Western academic frameworks.

Code Ethnography Workshop

The STS Critical Pedagogy Graduate Seminar, led by Drs. Cora Olson and Monamie Haines, and the Abya Yala Pluriversity, invite students and faculty for a making and doing workshop on the praxis and teaching of code ethnography.

Pluriversity Abya Yala’s Anticolonial Cuia in Aracaju

The event featured the Exhibition Women of Abya Yala, which brought together diverse artistic and cultural expressions: Indigenous feather art, bio-jewelry from the Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba Village, books, Xokó ceramics, and products from the Rede Solidária de Mulheres of Sergipe. There were also toré performances conducted by master Dona Bárbara Pankararu, her grandson Yuriê Pankararu, and the leaders Joseane Xokó and Danny Xokó.

Pluriversity Abya Yala’s Anticolonial Cuia in Maré

On October 15, the Abya Yala Pluriversity held the Cuia Anticolonial Maré: Understanding and Being Afro-Indigenous. In a neighborhood made up of 15 favelas and home to approximately 140,000 residents, where 62.1% of the population self-identifies as Black and 0.6% as Indigenous, we spent the day engaged in an intense exchange of knowledge and struggles.

Pluriversity Abya Yala’s Anticolonial Cuia in Manaus

The event sought to create spaces for learning, dialogue, and counter-colonial listening with women from the Amazon regions. Rooted in the understanding that women across the world had been experiencing accelerated workloads and expanding responsibilities, the gathering focused on the specific realities faced by women in the Brazilian Amazon.

Pluriversity Abya Yala’s Anticolonial Cuia in Campinas

The Pluriversity Abya Yala's Anticolonial Cuia in Campinas organized by the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) and the Tainã Cultural Center took place from May 16 to 21, 2025, in Campinas and Limeira. Under the theme “Articulations of Black and Indigenous Epistemologies and Technological Dissidences,” the activities brought together students, activists, and researchers to explore intersections between ancestral knowledge systems, community agency, and critical approaches to technology.

Confluence

The Anticolonial Confluence on Science and Technology is an event that is being planned to happen in the Amazon region that aims to be an infrastructure of knowledge to explore the notion of pluriversality, counter-, de- and anticoloniality as foundations for a science and technology project in Abya Yala...

Abya Yala Pluriversity Week of Science and Technology, April 5th, Friday

The Abya Yala Pluriversity Week of Science and Technology took place between April 1 and 5, 2024 and marked the inauguration of the Abya Yala Pluriversity initiative at Virginia Tech, which supports the circulation of Indigenous and Black people and knowledges in academia.