Europe is on the front lines of the fight over technology’s power: regulating Big Tech while also expanding surveillance, data infrastructure, and other technologies that can erode privacy, rights, and democratic power. Luminate leverages Europe’s regulators, courts, and storytellers to challenge concentrated tech power. Across a live show and podcast episode, we explore how Europe can build a future where tech actually serves people, society, and the planet.
Passing some of the world’s first landmark regulations on data privacy and AI, the EU has positioned itself as a global leader in holding technology companies to account. But this isn’t the whole story. At the same time, governments across Europe are expanding their use of invasive technologies for surveillance, security, and border control, and pushing for rapid data center development in communities that often don’t want it. When it comes to tech and its many harms, is the EU only a regulator, or perhaps also an accomplice?
This live conversation brings together feminist and antiracist tech policy entrepreneurs Evelyn Austin, Sarah Chander, Elisa Lindinger, and Asha Allen to unpack this tension, exploring how civil society and coalitions can navigate the power dynamics between governments and Big Tech - and what it will take to build accountability across both.
Asha Allen
Asha Allen is Secretary General of the Centre for Democracy and Technology, advocating for fundamental rights and platform accountability in EU tech policy. Previously, she led the organisation's work on online expression and the Digital Services Act. An intersectional digital rights advocate, she has worked with the UN, Council of Europe, and OSCE to address online gender-based violence.
.png)
Audrey Gaughran
Audrey Gaughran is an expert on the political economy of corporate power and has served as Executive Director of the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO) since 2021. Previously, she worked with Amnesty International, the United Nations, and the Natural Resource Governance Institute. She has two decades of experience investigating corporate power, human rights, oil and gas, and conflict minerals.
Elisa Lindinger
Elisa Lindinger co-leads SUPERRR Lab, a nonprofit organization in Berlin that advocates for equitable digital futures.
At SUPERRR, she applies an intersectional feminist perspective to current issues in digital policy, always with the goal of placing people—rather than technology—at the center of the discussion.
Evelyn Austin
Evelyn Austin is Executive Director of Bits of Freedom, an Amsterdam-based digital rights organization working to shape internet policy and support an open, just society. With over 15 years of experience at the intersection of technology and society, she also co-founded The Hmm, an experimental research platform exploring internet cultures.
Lou Welgryn
Lou Welgryn is secretary general of Data for Good, a community of tech experts that volunteer to help other NGOs in their quest for social justice, democracy and environmental protection while fighting against big tech hegemony.
.png)
Max Schulze
Max Schulze is co-founder of Leitmotiv and a seasoned software engineer with expertise in cloud infrastructure. He has worked on the core infrastructure of tech companies across the US and Europe. In 2019, he shifted his focus from building digital products to making them more sustainable, co-founding the Sustainable Digital Infrastructure Alliance to address the environmental impact of digital infrastructure.
Sarah Chander
Sarah Chander is an advocate and organizer working across feminist, racial, queer, and migrant justice movements in Europe. She is Director of the Equinox Initiative for Racial Justice, a queer and feminist organization working toward societies rooted in care. Previously, she led civil society advocacy on the EU AI Act and was named one of TIME's 100 most influential people in AI.
