Alexa Koenig

Alexa Koenig, PhD, JD, is Co-Faculty Director of the Human Rights Center (winner of the 2015 MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions), Director of HRC’s Investigations Program, and an adjunct professor at UC Berkeley School of Law, where she teaches classes that focus on the intersection of emerging technologies and human rights. She also co-teaches a class on open source investigative reporting at Berkeley Journalism. Alexa co-founded the Human Rights Center Investigations Lab(link is external), which trains students and professionals to use social media and other digital open source content to strengthen human rights research, reporting, and accountability. Alexa is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility, a member of the Technology Advisory Board for the Innovation Lab at Human Rights First, an advisory board member of Physicians for Human Rights, and a co-founder of the University of California Network on Human Rights Fact-Finding. She previously helped establish and co-chaired  the Technology Advisory Board of the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court; co-chaired the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Law Committee; and was a member of the University of California’s Presidential Working Group on Artificial Intelligence, for which she co-chaired the Human Resources subcommittee. Alexa has been honored with several awards for her work, including the United Nations Association-SF’s Global Human Rights Award, UC Berkeley’s Mark Bingham Award for Excellence, and the Eleanor Swift Award for Public Service. She has also been honored with a residency at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center (2019), with multiple writing residencies at Mesa Refuge, as a Woman Inspiring Change by Harvard’s Women’s Law Association (2020), and as one of “100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics” by Women in AI Ethics (2022). She conceived of and directed development of the Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open Source Investigations and has conducted trainings on online open source investigations at organizations around the world. Alexa has a BA from UCLA in World Arts and Cultures summa cum laude, a JD from the University of San Francisco with a specialization in cyberlaw and intellectual property magna cum laude, and both an MA and a PhD from UC Berkeley’s Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program with honors.

ALEXA KOENIG’S RECENT BOOKS INCLUDE

• Graphic: Trauma and Meaning in our Online Lives,(link is external) co-author with Andrea Lampros (Cambridge University Press 2023)
• Digital Witness: Using Open Source Methods for Human Rights Investigations, Advocacy and Accountability, with Sam Dubberley and Daragh Murray (Oxford University Press, 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

• Bellingcat: The online investigators tracking alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine(link is external), 60 Minutes, May 2022. Discussed the use of OSINT tools by civilian investigators, the important standards set by the Berkeley Protocol, and the utility of OSINT in war crimes investigations in Ukraine and beyon
• Berkeley students investigate war crimes using social media, UC Berkeley News 
• Digital Detectives, explores how open source investigations have sparked a revolution in journalism; NHK World, April 2020
• Fake news v fact: The battle for truth, The Economist, February 2019
• PBS NewsHour(link is external), 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

Alexa Koenig is teaching the following course in Fall 2026:

• 262.68 sec. 1 - Human Rights and War Crimes Investigations