Alexa Koenig

Lecturer in Residence
Executive Director, Human Rights Center
kalexakm@berkeley.edu
Tel: 510-643-5962 | Fax: 510-643-3830
396.c Simon Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720 MC:7200

Alexa Koenig, Ph.D., J.D, is the Executive Director of the Human Rights Center (winner of the 2015 MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions) and a lecturer at UC Berkeley School of Law, where she teaches classes on human rights and international criminal law with a particular focus on the impact of emerging technologies on human rights practice. She co-founded the Human Rights Investigations Lab, which trains undergraduate and graduate students to use cutting-edge open source methods to support human rights advocacy and accountability. Alexa is co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Human Rights and Technology, a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility, co-chair of the Technology Advisory Board of the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, and a founding member of the board of advisors for ARCHER, a UC Berkeley-established nonprofit that leverages technology to make data-driven investigations accessible, smarter and more scalable. Alexa has been honored with several awards for her work, including the United Nations Association-SF’s Global Human Rights Award, Mark Bingham Award for Excellence, the Eleanor Swift Award for Public Service, the Phi Beta Kappa Northern California Teaching Excellence Award, and diverse grants, including support from the National Science Foundation and numerous private foundations. Her research and commentary have appeared in the Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, US News and World Report, and elsewhere.

ALEXA KOENIG’S RECENT BOOKS INCLUDE

Digital Witness: Using Open Source Methods for Human Rights Investigations, Advocacy and Accountability, with Sam Dubberley and Daragh Murray (Oxford University Press, forthcoming in 2019)
Hiding in Plain Sight: The Pursuit of War Criminals from Nuremberg to the War on Terror, with Eric Stover and Victor Peskin (UC Press, 2016)
Extreme Punishment: Comparative Studies in Detention, Incarceration and Solitary Confinement, editor with Keramet Reiter (Palgrave MacMillan, 2015)
The Guantánamo Effect: Exposing the Consequences of U.S. Detention and Interrogation Practices, contributor with Eric Stover, Laurel Fletcher, and Stephen Smith Cody (UC Press, 2009). Additional research and commentary have appeared in such diverse outlets as the Annual Review of Law and Social Science, the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, US News and World Reports, and elsewhere.

RECENT MEDIA APPEARANCES

PBS NewsHour, discussing the launch of the Human Rights Investigations Lab, February 2017
“Hiding in Plain Sight: The Pursuit of War Criminals from Nuremberg to the War on Terror,” ALOUD Podcast Series, Jan. 17, 2017
UC Berkeley students work to authenticate photos, videos from conflict zones, ABC 7 News, July 13, 2017.

Education

J.D., University of San Francisco School of Law
Ph.D., UC Berkeley
M.A., UC Berkeley