Paloma Viejo Otero has been granted with the YUFE Post-Doctoral Programme with a project proposal on “Equality, Wellbeing and Platform Governance”. This highly competitive programme by the Young Universities for the Future of Europe (YUFE) provides early career researchers with excellent research conditions and dedicated mentoring. Dr. Viejo Otero was granted one of eight fellowship in Europe, and the only one hosted at the University of Bremen.

Paloma Viejo Otero have recently graduated as Doctor of Philosophy at Dublin City University (2022) with a thesis that explores the principles, values and governing techniques that Facebook applies to govern hate speech. Before her doctorate, Paloma obtained an MPhil in Race, Ethnicity and Conflict from Trinity College Dublin (2012-2014), an MA in Culture and Art Studies by the Research Institute Ortega y Gasset , and a BA from the School of Communications  (UPSA) in Salamanca, Spain.  In addition to her academic career, Paloma has extensive professional experience in working with local communities in Guatemala, Sudan and Ireland in the public and non-profit sector. 

Both Paloma’s research and personal interest gravitate around two topics: how structural discrimination affects social well being, and how structural discrimination is embedded in technological systems. As such, at the ZeMIKI Paloma will be conducting the three-year research project titled Equality, Wellbeing and Platform Governance.  The project explores how social platforms policies on hate speech play a significant role in the discrimination and consequent well being of minority groups in Europe. The project will contribute substantively to the lab’s research agenda on platform governance, and the university research focus on inequality.