Dr Iago Bojczuk (2026)

  • Research Affiliate
Dr Iago Bojczuk (2026)

Contact

Connect

Location

  • iago.bojczuk@berkeley.edu

About

Biography

Iago Bojczuk is a Research Associate with the College of Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Research Affiliate with the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. His research lies broadly in three core areas: digital infrastructures and sustainability; science, technology, and innovation policy; and the governance of large-scale complex systems, with a particular focus on the Global South.

Drawing on Science and Technology Studies, his PhD thesis, “Southern Clouds: Data Centres in Brazil and the Remapping of Global Digital Infrastructures,” examined Brazil’s data centre ecosystem by tracing how the sector’s expansion intersects with urban inequality, political economy, renewable energy transitions, and compounding climate risks, while situating these dynamics within wider debates on digital infrastructure research in and from the Global South. Funded by the United Kingdom’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Cambridge Commonwealth, European and International Trust, this interdisciplinary project developed the concept of “Southern Clouds” to examine how cloud infrastructures take shape beyond dominant Big Tech narratives and Global North geographies. It investigated the local, national, and global vectors through which such clouds become territorialised, as well as the distinct dynamics these new infrastructural nodes engender in relation to sustainability and resilience as they reshape the geographies of cloud computing and data traffic.

Throughout his graduate studies, Iago has been involved in practice- and policy-oriented research projects on global development, broadband and 5G networks, as well as fiber-optic subsea cables, data centres, and satellite systems. His work has been published in Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, Media, Culture & Society, Global Media and Communication, Submarine Telecoms Forum, e-flux Magazine, and official UN publications. In the 2024–25 academic year, he was a visiting scholar at Koç University in Istanbul, Türkiye. Beyond academia, Iago has held consultancy and internship roles with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the SubOptic Foundation, and the World Bank’s Vice Presidency for Infrastructure. He is also an alum of the European Space Agency (ESA)’s 33rd ECSL Summer School on Space Law and Policy, with a focus on cybersecurity.

Iago holds a PhD from the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge, a Master of Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he was a Lemann Fellow, and a Bachelor of Arts (Phi Beta Kappa) from the University of Oregon.

 

Supervisor

Professor Ella McPherson

 

Affiliation Dates

17/05/2026 - 17/06/2027

 

Awards

  • Pacific Telecommunications Council's Emerging Scholar Award (2025)
  • SubOptic Industry Excellence Award (2025)
  • Graduate Student Travel Award, Queens’ College, University of Cambridge (2022-23) 
  • Alan and Christina Macdonald Award, Queens’ College, University of Cambridge (2022-23)
  • Cambridge Commonwealth, European & International Trust Scholarship (2021-25)
  • Economic Social Research Council (ESRC) Award, UK’s Research and Innovation Office (2021-24)
  • MIT-Brazil Summer Fellowship, MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (2019-20) 
  • Jorge Paulo Lemann Education Fellowship, Lemann Foundation (2018-20) 
  • Full-Research Assistantship, MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (2018-20) 
  • Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Scholarship Recipient, Oxford Consortium for Human Rights (2017) 
  • Robert W. Sawyer Memorial Scholarship, University of Oregon (2017) 
  • Humanities Undergraduate Research Fellowship, Oregon Humanities Center (2016)
  • Shephard Family Scholarship, University of Oregon's Clark Honors College (2014-16) 
  • 25 Ducks Award, University of Oregon (2015) 
  • International Cultural Service Scholarship, University of Oregon (2014-18) 
  • Opportunity Funds, U.S. Department of State (2011-12)

Research

Research interests

  • Digital Infrastructures
  • Science and Technology and Innovation Policy
  • Science and technology studies (STS)
  • Critical infrastructure studies
  • Geopolitics of technology
  • New Space Economy
  • Space Policy and Diplomacy
  • Geography of media and communication
  • Cloud and Data Centre and Satellite Infrastructures
  • Sustainability and Resilience of Socio-Technical Systems

Research Groups and Affiliations

 

Grants and Projects

  • “Enhancing Subsea Cable Protection and Resilience in the Caribbean,” Principal Investigator, Internet Society Foundation and SubOptic Foundation (total value: $280,000), January 2026–Present.
  • “Sustainable Subsea Networks,” Research Consultant. Internet Society Foundation & SubOptic Foundation. February 2022 – Present.

 

 

 

Publications

Journal Articles

  • “Satellite Promises: An Open-Source Investigation and Footprint Analysis of SGDC-1’s Quest in Delivering Broadband to Brazil’s Public Rural Schools.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies (online first). https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565251353426. 
  • Bojczuk, Iago, Nicole Starosielski, and Anne Pasek. “Flying the skies to wire the seas: Subsea cables, remote work, and the social fabric of a media industry.” Media, Culture & Society, 46 no. 2 (September 19, 2023): 358-375. https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437231198423.
  • Pereira Gabriel, Iago Bojczuk, and Lisa Parks. “WhatsApp disruptions in Brazil: A content analysis of user and news media responses, 2015-2018. Global Media and Communication, 18 no. 1 (August 23, 2021): 113-148. https://doi.org/10.1177/17427665211038530.

Book Chapters

  • “Growing the Cloud at the ‘Corner of the Atlantic’: Fortaleza as a Digital Infrastructure Hub Amidst AI-Renewable Energy Paradigms in Brazil.” In AI Infrastructures and Sustainability (eds. A. Mollen, F. Jansen, S. Kannengießer, and J. Velkova), Palgrave Studies in European Communication Research and Education. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-09748-4_4.
  • Ramírez, George, and Iago Bojczuk. “Cooling the Transnational Cloud: The Singapore Data Center Moratorium and Thermal Management in Southeast Asia.” In Cooling Asia: Technology, Environment and Society in Hot Climates (eds. Christopher Courtney and Jiat-Hwee Chang), University of Pittsburgh Press. Forthcoming. 

Reports

Technical Conference Papers

  • Bojczuk, Iago, Lily Yuguchi, Benson Ou, and Nareg Simitian. 2026. “Digital Infrastructure for Space (DI4Space): The Rise of the Ground Segment as a Service Model.” To appear in Proceedings of the 77th International Astronautical Congress (IAC 2026), Antalya, Türkiye, October 2026.
  • Youssef, Hesham, Vedrana Stojanac, Nick Morris, John Booth, Ella Herbert, Caroline Crowley, and Iago Bojczuk. 2025. “Metrics for Cable Landing Station Sustainability.” In Proceedings of SubOptic 2025, Lisbon, Portugal, June 2025.
  • Starosielski, Nicole, Iago Bojczuk, John Hooft-Toomey, Ramakrishnan Durairajan, Hannah Ellis, Erick Contag, and John Tibbles. 2025. “Enhancing Strategic Resilience of Subsea Cables in the Caribbean.” In Proceedings of SubOptic 2025, Lisbon, Portugal, June 2025.

Non-Refereed Publications

Media Articles

Teaching and supervision

  • Course Designer and Co-Instructor
    Tech Wars: Security, Geopolitics, and Resilience of Digital Infrastructures.
    Global Digital Infrastructures Program, University of California, Berkeley
  • Supervisor for SOC7: Media, Culture, and Society.
    University of Cambridge, Faculty of Human, Social, and Political Science
    Topics supervised include: Digital Media, Everyday Life and Inequality; The Quantified Self; ICT4D and the Environment.
  • Social IT Solutions Workshop, Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil,2020.
    Social IT Solutions Workshop, Dar es Salaam Institute of Technology, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 2019.
    Topics included: Human-centred design, technology ethics, prototyping, critical making, ethnographic methods, and social entrepreneurship.