Dr. Eirliani Abdul Rahman

Eirliani is an outstanding scientist and the sole principal investigator of a research project called TRAPP  (“Trafficking Risks: AI for Proactive Protection“), developing an AI tool to combat child trafficking at the MZES. She is Co-Director and Co-Founder of the Global Responsible Tech Lab (GRTL), together with Prof. Marc Ratkovic, Chair of Social Data Science at the School of Social Sciences at the University of Mannheim.

She was a Research Affiliate at the University of Cambridge’s Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy and holds a doctorate in public health from Harvard University. Previously, Eirliani was a Senior Fellow at the Collaborative on Global Children's Issues at Georgetown University. A Fellow of the Royal Society for Arts, Eirliani is a member of Chatham House and was a former New America Open Technology Institute Fellow. She was a Prajna Leader­ship and Julio Frenk DrPH Fellow at Harvard and won the inaugural doctoral fellow­ship from the University of Konstanz’s Centre for Human | Data | Society in 2023. Since its inception in 2016, she was a founding member of Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council as an expert on child online safety.

In December 2022, Dr. Abdul Rahman made global headlines following her resignation from the council, speaking out against the meteoric rise in hate speech after Elon Musk’s purchase of the platform. Her work has been profiled by inter alia, the BBC, CBC, NPR, Slate, Harvard Public Health, the Sunday Times, and Business Insider. Her opinion pieces have been published by inter alia New America, Newsweek, Harvard Public Health, Chatham House and the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP).

This qualification has just earned her a grant from the Baden-Württemberg Foundation for herself and a team of scientists at the University of Mannheim for 3 years with an option for extension. Her project will be carried out in close cooperation with the Chair of Social Data Science and ad­ministered at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES).