Malavika is the inaugural Executive Director of the Digital Asia Hub, an independent research think-tank incubated by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Prior to her relocation to Hong Kong, she was a fellow at BKC, and continues her engagement as a Faculty Associate.
A technology lawyer for over 15 years, she practised law at Allen & Overy, London, and was Vice President and Technology Counsel at Citigroup. A graduate of the National Law School of India, Bangalore, Malavika has an LL.M. from Northwestern University, Chicago. She was a Visiting Scholar at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, and has had fellowships at the University of Sydney and the Institute for Technology & Society, Rio de Janeiro. She taught India’s first course on information technology and law in 1997.
She serves on the Extended Programming Committee of the annual Computer, Privacy and Data Protection (CPDP) conference in Brussels, and on the Advisory Board of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). She was previously a member of the Executive Committee of the IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems, and an Associate Fellow with Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs), as part of its Asia-Pacific Programme. She was also a member of the High-level Expert Advisory Group to the OECD project, “Going Digital: Making the Transformation Work for Growth and Well-being”.
She has been based in Singapore since she joined the faculty of the Yong Pung How School of Law at SMU. Her interests straddle law, technology, architecture, design and dance, and she is especially invested in the intersection of spatial, bodily and intellectual privacy, identity and autonomy.