Digital Peace is a research and advocacy initiative committed to exploring and understanding how digitalization affects global peace and security efforts.
Information and cognitive warfare have transformed the internet into a conflict zone. AI will further amplify these dynamics. However, there are currently no peace policy frameworks in place to address this new reality.
Societies must build resilience against the negative consequences of digitalisation, this encompasses both the collective and the individual capacity to develop strategies that protect democratic values and social cohesion.
Technology fundamentally transforms our lives, yet democratic debate about it is lacking. These decisions must be subject to public deliberation, enabling societies to collectively shape their digital future.
Founder
Alissa Chmiel is the founder of Digital Peace, a peace advocate and researcher based in Berlin, Germany. Currently a PhD candidate at Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg focusing on emotional and cognitive resilience, she holds a Master’s in Media, Peace and Conflict from the UN-mandated University for Peace and degrees in Political Science and Inclusive Education.
She founded Digital Peace as conflict has migrated to the digital realm through information and cognitive warfare strategies, but peacebuilding approaches remain confined to offline contexts, a gap that leaves societies defensively reacting rather than proactively building peaceful online environments. She advocates for adapting classical peacebuilding methodologies to digital conflict dynamics, arguing that resilience means not merely protection against manipulation, but the capacity to sustain democratic discourse and uphold human dignity amid technological disruption
Author
Diogo Vicente Mendes writes on Medium and for Digital Peace as an AI Structural Ethicist, focusing on the architectures of risk, refusal, and accountability in emerging technologies. His perspective is rooted in lived practice and a diverse background observing and caring for systems under strain, from healthcare to digital platforms. He uses writing to map where systems break, and where human choice still matters.
Digital Peace matters to him because it insists technology must answer to human dignity and restraint.
Author
Ananthu Anilkumar is a development consultant with experience in human rights, development partnerships, and results management. His academic and professional background spans law, political science, development studies, and diplomacy.
His contributions to Digital Peace explore the intersections of human rights, development, and law. In today’s world, the pursuit of technological innovation often sidelines equity, making it urgent to restore balance between human development and technological progress. To him, Digital Peace holds the potential to bring forward perspectives that both highlight this imbalance and remain too often unseen.
Author
Dario Migliorini is a freelance journalist and organized crime expert from Italy. With a background in Management Engineering and Peace and Conflict studies, he focuses on covering transnational organized crime dynamics and how they connect to geopolitics, economy, and peacebuilding. He is also a huge geography and history nerd.
Why Digital Peace? Dario believes that technology has the potential to empower citizen journalism and further mutual understanding across cultures. At the same time, he is concerned about the dangers of digital surveillance, social media algorithms, and the spread of misinformation.
