Nani
Jansen Reventlow

Director of the Digital Freedom Fund
Internet and Society Award
Winner
2018
Nani Jansen Reventlow, Director of the Digital Freedom Fund, will be awarded an OII Internet and Society award in recognition of her work on strategic litigation to advance digital rights in Europe.

Nani Jansen Reventlow is the Director of the Digital Freedom Fund, which supports the advancement of digital rights in Europe through strategic litigation. She is a recognised international lawyer responsible for groundbreaking freedom of expression cases around the world, a lawyer at Doughty Street Chambers, affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School. She currently works together with Leigh Day to bring new cases to the African regional human rights courts.

Between 2011 and 2016, Nani has overseen the litigation practice of the Media Legal Defence Initiative (MLDI) globally, leading or advising on cases before the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the UN Human Rights Committee, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and several African regional forums. Nani obtained the first freedom of expression judgment from the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (Konaté v. Burkina Faso) and from the East African Court of Justice (Burundi Journalists’ Union v. Burundi).

As a Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center, Nani developed the Catalysts for Collaboration, which offers a set of best practices and case studies encouraging activists to collaborate across disciplinary silos and use strategic litigation in digital rights campaigns.

A Dutch-qualified attorney, Nani graduated in civil law and public international law from the University of Amsterdam and specialised in human rights at Columbia Law School and the European University Institute. She has developed and delivered training sessions on freedom of expression and human rights litigation to dozens of lawyers from several diverse jurisdictions, including India, Russia, Cambodia, Hungary, Botswana and Croatia.

Nani’s scholarly writing on issues in international law, human rights, data protection and international arbitration have been published around the world. She is a strategic adviser to GQUAL, campaign for gender parity in international representation, member of the Media Law Committee of the International Bar Association, and part of the advisory group of the Internet Policy Observatory. Nani further is a board member of the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development and the Media Development Investment Fund.

You can follow Nani on Twitter @InterwebzNani.