Sam Dubberley

Sam Dubberley is the Director of the Technology, Rights & Investigations Division at Human Rights Watch. In this role, he leads efforts in digital investigations and open source research, as well as work to expose and document human rights abuses in the digital age.

Sam's work at Human Rights Watch includes overseeing HRW’s Digital Investigations Lab verification of online content to corroborate human rights violations, and research to highlight the impact of technology on human rights. The division addresses issues such as the use of surveillance technologies, algorithmic exploitation, and restrictions on online speech.

Prior to joining Human Rights Watch, Sam led the Evidence Lab at Amnesty International, where he conducted and supervised extensive open-source research projects. He established and managed the award-winning Digital Verification Corps initiative—a partnership with global universities training students in open source research.

Sam is a research visitor at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at Oxford University, where he is working on the second edition of the co-edited book Digital Witness: Using Open Source Information for Human Rights Investigation, Documentation, and Accountability. He is a fellow of the Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex, where he also served as a research consultant for their Human Rights Big Data and Technology Project. He was a fellow of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University and a founding partner of First Draft News, an organization established in 2015 to combat harmful misinformation. He has also published research on the impact of viewing harmful content during open source investigations and the risk of vicarious trauma.

Sam holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Cambridge, a postgraduate degree from the University of Leicester, and an MBA from Koç University in Istanbul.