Katelyn Cioffi
Senior Research Scholar, Digital Welfare State and Human Rights Project
Technology and Human Rights

Katelyn Cioffi is a Senior Research Scholar at the Center, where she works on the Digital Welfare State and Human Rights Project and leads the project’s work on digital identity systems. Katelyn’s research focuses on how digital government initiatives—such as biometric national digital ID systems, federated identity ecosystems, and legal and regulatory frameworks for emerging technologies and artificial intelligence—affect human rights, social exclusion, and inequality.

Katelyn has experience working across a wide range of human rights issues, including social and economic rights, freedom of expression, gender-based discrimination, and international justice. Prior to coming to CHRGJ, she worked in the Strategic Litigation Unit at Amnesty International, where she supported human rights litigation in the United States, the European Court of Human Rights, and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. She has worked extensively with civil society organizations around the world on issues of transitional justice, human rights, monitoring & evaluation, and capacity building.

From 2018–19, Katelyn was a Fulbright Fellow at the Amsterdam Center for International Law, University of Amsterdam, where her research focused on the doctrine of emerging consensus and its effect on contestation in regional human rights systems. She holds a JD from Harvard Law School (cum laude), an MA in International Studies and Diplomacy from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, and a BA in History from Brown University. Katelyn is admitted to practice law in the State of New York.