Samer Hassan (he/they) is a Spanish/Lebanese activist and researcher, currently Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center, and Associate Professor at Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain). His research revolves around decentralized collaboration, combining Computer Science and Social Sciences. He was awarded EU's largest individual research grant, a 1.5M€ funding from the European Research Council (ERC) for the project P2P Models. He leads a multidisciplinary team aiming to facilitate a commons-oriented Collaborative Economy. Under this umbrella, they build free/open source prototypes relying on decentralized tech (e.g. fediverse, web3 / blockchain), employ qualitative and quantitative methods to co-design experiments with co-ops and communities (e.g. Amara, Smart.coop), apply data science to study existing phenomena (e.g. Decentralized Autonomous Organizations), and explore innovative forms of cooperative governance.
Samer led the team building the framework for federate apps SwellRT, adopted by the Apache Foundation. Beyond academia, he has been a grassroots organizer in a diverse array of initiatives both online and offline. He enjoys applying grassroots facilitation methods to teaching his course on cyber-ethics.
