Nina-Simone Edwards wants to change the way we think about cybersecurity. Instead of just mapping out digital threats in code and firewalls, she’s looking at how vulnerabilities in our personal lives—like limited digital literacy or shaky Internet access—get tangled up with our online security risks. By dissecting the social and structural “digital divides” and showing how they feed into modern cybersecurity dilemmas, Edwards offers a whole new lens on how we define, anticipate, and address digital risks.
As a Fritz Fellow and Senior Institute Associate at Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute for Technology Law & Policy, Edwards is tapping into the law to help untangle these issues. Before arriving at the Tech Institute, she was a Fulbright Scholar, lent a year of service through City Year AmeriCorps, and interned at organizations like the Migrant Legal Action Program and Just Futures Law—experiences that deepened her understanding of how technology, law, and society collide in everyday life. While at Georgetown Law, she honed in on what “privacy” means for communities that have long been sidelined, and she pushed for data justice that’s actually meaningful, not just theoretical. You can find her work in outlets like Tech Policy Press and in several academic journals including the Georgetown Law Technology Review, the Georgetown Immigration Law Journal, the Georgetown Journal of Modern Critical Race Perspectives, and the Tulane Environmental Law Journal.