WHO
WE ARE
TEAM MEMBERS.
Thordis Elva
Chairperson & founder
(Iceland)
Writer, speaker and activist Thordis Elva awoke to the reality of online abuse when she served as chairman of Iceland's only women's shelter, where victims felt they couldn't leave their abusers due to threats of digital violence. After years of violence prevention work in the offline realm, which included shaping national policy. Her lecture tour Permanently Naked: What You Need to Know About Image-Based Sexual Abuse attracted over 18,000 guests in three countries, underpinning her nomination as Woman of the Year 2015 in Iceland. She was instrumental in leading the #metoo revolution and accepted the Person of the Year award 2017 on behalf of the movement. Thordis Elva has spoken about the role of digital media in furthering gender equality at the UN, EU, the Nordic Council of ministers, and has contributed to anthologies about online abuse. Violence prevention has long been at the core of her work, and she has shared her own story of sexual assault in a book and TED talk that has been viewed over 9 million times.
Moa Bladini
Founder & member of Advisory
Board (Sweden)
Laywer, lecturer and researcher Moa Bladini specialises in criminal law and criminal procedure law. Her many research projects include The Report Hatred and Threats Online - a Survey of the Legal Regulation in the Nordic Countries, on behalf of NIKK and the Nordic Council of Ministers. She is currently participating in the comparative project GENHA Hate Speech, Gender, Social Networks and Political Parties within the programme Justice Programme (JUST) Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme (REC). In 2020-2022, she will contribute to the project Rape or consent? Effects of the new rape legislation on legal reasoning and practice. As a senior lecturer at the University of Göteborg, Moa teaches criminal law and criminal procedure law, where she focuses on evidence and gender perspectives.
María Rún Bjarnadóttir
Founder & member of Advisory Board (Iceland)
Dr. María Rún Bjarnadóttir is the Director for Innovation and Policy at the National Commissioner for the Icelandic Police where she previously served as Director for Internet Safety and Director for Police Training and Professional Development. She is a member of Grevio, the independent expert body responsible for monitoring the implementation of the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women
and Domestic Violence (Istanbul Convention). Her expertise lies at the intersection between technology and human rights and her professional experience extends to regulatory, advisory and policy roles in the fields of
cybercrime, violence against women, human rights, and internet law. María has contributed to the development of international standard setting instruments stemming from the
United Nations and the Council of Europe. Her award-winning research on sexual privacy online underpinned comprehensive criminal and policy reforms in Iceland in 2021. María holds a B.A. and Mag.Jur. in law from University of Iceland, and a PhD in law from University of Sussex.
Milla Mølgaard
External Media Advisor and founder (Denmark)
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Journalist, editor and writer Milla Mølgaard worked for 12 years at newspaper Politiken, where she frequently covered topics such as online abuse, digital rights, LGBTQI and democratic issues, reporting on some of the most high profile cases in the country and elsewhere. She is the author of two books about online sexual abuse and the way it impacts victims (Delt, 2019), as well as a guidebook for parents (Min teenager deler da ikke nögenbilleder, 2020), giving public speeches and workshops on both. In 2020, Milla received a grant to record and release a podcast in eight episodes about image-based sexual abuse and the internet.
Louna
Hakkarainen
Board member (Finland)
Louna Hakkarainen is a senior advisor, researcher, writer, and an activist. Between 2018–2022 she managed activities related to gender-based digital violence and online harassment in Women's Line Finland. She was in charge of developing and running specialized support services (helpline, chat and peer support groups) for girls and women who have experienced any kind of technology-facilitated abuse – ranging from digital stalking by an ex partner to online harassment to silence politically active women. She has also written a guidebook about digital abuse in the context of intimate-partner violence. Louna’s background is in social sciences, science and technology studies, and participatory design, and she defended her doctoral thesis in Aalto University in 2017. Currently Louna works as a senior advisor in research and innovation services in the Diaconia University of Applied Sciences in Helsinki and teaches Gender and Technology course in Aalto University.
Emma Holten
Board member & founder
(Denmark)
Emma Holten is an online human rights activist and (as of January 2021) works part-time as a political consultant at the Danish Women's Council. After being a victim online image based abuse in 2011, she became aware of the pitfalls of structural oppression and gendered violence, online and offline. This led to the activist project CONSENT, which became a viral success. She has delivered keynotes at the Conference on the status of Women at the UN, The Next Web, TEDxVienna and Point Festival, among many others. Holten sits on the board of the Digitalt Ansvar foundation, which advocates for the rights of victims of digital violence. She was born in 1991 and lives in Copenhagen.
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Johanna
Vehkoo
Board member (Finland)
Johanna Vehkoo is an award-winning journalist and non-fiction author who specialises in all kinds of misinformation and fakery on the Internet. Currently she is working as Professor of Practice in Journalism at the University of Tampere, Finland. Johanna has written five books, one of them a journalistic graphic novel about online misogyny, and another recounting the absurd and kafkaesque story of being indicted for defaming a well-known far-right provocateur. Johanna has spoken and written extensively about digital violence in Finland. She is the recipient of three different freedom of speech awards.
Johanna is a founder of an online publisher of investigative journalism, Long Play. She has completed fellowships at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Oxford University, and at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C.
Ida Östensson
Founder & member of Advisory Board (Sweden)
By combining gender equality, communication and advocacy, Ida Östensson has played an important role in the Swedish public debate for years. She has founded several organisations that focus on gender equality, including the Make Equal Foundation, that develops and implements solution-oriented methods to improve equality in Sweden. In 2013 she was one of the initiators of the Fatta Movement, fighting to make consent a basic requirement in sexual offence legislation and practice. Ida also started #killmiddag (#guytalk) as a way to get boys and men to take responsibility for sexual violence, starting with themselves. She has received several awards for her work such as “Super Communicator of the Year”, “BRIS Award Winner of the Year” and “People’s Educator of the Year”.
Bjarki Þór Grönfeldt
Board member (Iceland)
Bjarki Gronfeldt, having earned his PhD in political psychology from the University of Kent, England, in 2023, is an assistant professor at Bifröst University, Iceland. His research concerns how the way individuals relate to their social groups (e.g., national, gender and local identities) affects social behaviours and attitudes. In 2022, he received notable recognition alongside fellow scholars from Kent, securing the prestigious “Invent2Protect” research grant from the US Embassy in London. This grant supports their innovative project aimed at designing interventions to deter young men from adopting Incel ideologies and other forms of misogynistic attitudes.
Christian
Mogensen
Board member (Denmark)
Christian Mogensen is a senior advisor on Technological Diplomacy to the Danish ministry of Foreign Affairs based in Silicon Valley, and has a long background as an expert on the men populating the darker rabbit holes of the internet. Prior, he worked for close to a decade with Center for Digital Youth Care (Denmark) as an expert on gaming, gender & sex, democracy and destructive online behaviour. He's a renowned public speaker with a reputation for bridging the generational gap between the worlds of 4Chan, 8Kun and Reddit, and those not (yet!) part of neither imageboards, gaming communities or new social media. Christian has been a member of the European Commission's Radicalisation Awareness Network's expert group, as well as other professional networks.
Christian authored the report 'The Angry Internet', an analysis of the extent of violent misogynists in the Nordics, as well as a psychological insight from qualitative studies with groups of 'angry men', for The Nordic Council of Ministries, as well as the research project 'Angry Young Men' on the same topics. Christian has observed, interviewed and understood the men that deem themselves 'the involuntary celibate', and those being part of the 'new resistance movement'. He is a master of philosophy and psychology from Aarhus University, but employs just as many memes as statistics; a mix that has been tested in front of The United Nations, the European Parliament, the European Commission and many schools and educational facilities in Denmark and Europe, over the last decade.
Kristina
Wicksell
Board member (Sweden)
Kristina Wicksell is a Swedish communicator and change-maker on issues related to equality, democracy, and human rights. She is the brain behind several successful campaigns and has won, among other prizes, the two Swedish honorary awards “Hetast i Almedalen” and "Månadens nätängel". In her work, she has been responsible for all digital communications for both the Make Equal foundation and the human rights organization Civil Rights Defenders. Kristina has been a consultant and lecturer in practical anti-discrimination work, cyber hate, intersectionality, and unconscious bias. She also co-created Skärpning – a project that collaborated with Facebook and other big stakeholders to counter hate speech and harassment online, and Näthatshjälpen – a website that allows victims of online abuse to file a digital police report, read up on their legal rights and get help. Näthatshjälpen gets over a million hits per year and remains one of the most successful projects in the field of digital rights in the Nordic region.
Eygló
​Árnadóttir
Project collaborator / Game Changer
Eygló Árnadóttir has an MA in Gender Studies, an MEd in Secondary Education and an MA in Applied Editing and Publishing. She has worked as a gender studies teacher, independent researcher on gender-based violence and other equality issues, has served on the board of the Association of Icelandic Gender Studies Teachers and is the former educational director of Stígamót counseling center for victims of sexual violence. Eygló is a contributing author to the newly published Manual on Education and Prevention of Sexual Violence, intended for teachers and other personnel of the Icelandic school system. She has also overseen courses for school staff on education, prevention and school response to gender-based violence - sponsored by the Icelandic Equality Fund. Alongside her role in NORDREF's Game Changer project, Eygló is currently working on a study on secondary school students' experience of the ability, knowledge and response of the school system to sexual violence among young people. She is part of a professional task force on gender-based violence among young people - assembled in the fall of 2022 following loud protests by young people about the school system's inability to deal with the issue. She also serves on the Ministry of Education's committee that deals with the response to sexual violence in educational institutions.