Juliana da Cunha Mota

Juliana's research and teaching interests include privacy, data protection, AI, content moderation, freedom of expression, technology regulation, and human rights in the digital environment in general.   

She is currently a Digital Policy Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, researching European digital policies under two projects: (i) InfoLEAD (Information and Media Literacy for Judges and Policymakers); and (ii) ReMeD (Resilient Media for Democracy in the Digital Age). At ReMeD, Juliana investigates the governance of fact-checkers in Europe and worldwide. At InfoLEAD, she designed an executive media literacy course for judges and policy makers. 

During her DPhil, Juliana conducted research on data protection and privacy rights in the age of surveillance capitalism, under the supervision of Professor Jeremias Adams-Prassl and Professor Rebecca Williams. She sought to understand whether the current frameworks of the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice are still adequate to protect rights in light of the new economic imperative of data aggregation. Her research employed empirical methods (systematic content analysis) to investigate the working practices of these courts and how they contribute to shaping and reshaping informational privacy rights in Europe. 

She holds a Master of Laws from the University of Cambridge (2018) and a Bachelor of Laws from the University of São Paulo (2016).

At Oxford, Juliana acted the co-convener of the Future of Technology and Society Discussion Group and was a research assistant to Professor Nicole Stremlau, working at the ConflictNet project where she researched predictive technologies and anticipatory action. Prior to that, she has acted as a mooting assistant helping run the Price Media Law Moot Court Competition in 2023 and 204. She is also a former teaching assistant of prof. Sandra Wachter, having helped deliver the course Internet Technologies and Regulations at the Oxford Internet Institute (MT 2022 and MT 2023).

On a professional level, Juliana acted as a law clerk for criminal judges in São Paulo, Brazil. She also researched m’health, encryption, and data protection at Privacidade Brazil, a think tank affiliated with Internet Lab, founded by Ford Foundation. After being admitted to the Brazilian Bar in 2016, she acted as a solicitor in the privacy/data protection practice of Dias Carneiro Advogados, a Brazilian law firm that partially funded her research. 

She is a great mooting enthusiast, having participated in several competitions. Since 2022, she participates in the Price Media Law Moot Court Competition in different capacities. She assisted judging the WIPO Moot Court Competition in 2025 and she was the winner of the 2015 Nelson Mandela World Human Rights Moot Court and the receiver of the Peter Coenen Scholarship to attend the 2016 edition of the Lucern Academy for Human Rights Implementation. Since 2020, she regularly judges the preliminary and advanced rounds of this competition.