Francesco is a Policy Analyst at Open Future. He holds a Bachelor in European Studies from Maastricht University, with a minor in European and International law. He graduated with summa cum laude from SciencesPo Paris where he obtained a Master’s degree in European Affairs with a specialization in Digital, New Technology & Public Policy. He wrote a Master thesis on the intersection of online campaigning and politics by investigating whether Facebook use by populist parties constitutes an electoral weapon for their growing success in Europe.
Before joining Open Future, Francesco interned as an external consultant at the OECD Directorate of Science, Technology & Innovation. Likewise, he interned in the Tech for Good department at Nesta Italia and at the ALDA headquarters in the Council of Europe.
In addition, Francesco has previous experience in project leadership as he worked as a Topic Manager for Student Forum Maastricht, where he guided the drafting process of a policy proposal to the European Commission on public sector digitization. Similarly, he was the co-lead of the Digital Democracy cycle of the Institute for Internet & the Just Society where he managed pro-bono research projects on issues related to internet governance.
Finally, as of last year, Francesco became a fellow at the Datasphere Initiative, a research program incubated by the Internet & Jurisdiction Policy Network covering a variety of topics spanning from global data governance frameworks and the free flow of data.
Francesco is currently based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. In his free time, he enjoys reading, running, playing golf and (trying to) reconnect with his Dutch language heritage.