About Julia
Júlia Keserű is a research fellow at Open Future, contributing to our Steering AI Investment line of work. Holding a master’s degree in International Studies from Corvinus University Budapest, she has two decades of nonprofit leadership, advocacy, and research experience centered on transparency, human rights, social justice, and technology.
Julia began her career in Hungary’s transparency advocacy community, where she and colleagues at K-Monitor developed the country’s first data-driven tools to support investigative journalists and civil society organizations. She advocated for stronger transparency and anti-corruption regimes and led research projects that examined the role of data-driven systems in the fight against corruption.
Between 2012 and 2015, Julia was the international policy lead at Washington DC-based Sunlight Foundation, where she advised civil society and government actors from around the world on their data-driven transparency projects.
Julia spent eight years at The Engine Room, a global nonprofit researching emerging technologies and human rights activism, first as a program lead, later as Executive Director of the globally distributed organization. Under her leadership, the organization led flagship research projects exposing how humanitarian actors experiment with emerging technologies and advised hundreds of small nonprofits and large INGOs on adopting responsible, safe, and secure data infrastructures.
Julia has been a consistent advocate for future-proof privacy regimes in the online world and has written many articles, essays, and op-eds on issues of data ethics, privacy, and human rights. As a Senior Tech Policy Fellow at the Mozilla Foundation, she created the DataBodyProject—a policy research initiative exploring how bodily integrity can be better integrated into technology industry norms and regulations. Her work and essays have appeared in numerous global and Hungarian outlets, including Noema Magazine and the LA Times.
