Samuel Gregory

Sam Gregory helps people use the power of the moving image and participatory technologies to create human rights change. He is an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and the Program Director of WITNESS (www.witness.org), the leading organization supporting anyone anywhere to use video and technology to protect and defend human rights. Sam leads WITNESS’ Innovation Initiatives and WITNESS’ Media Lab, advocates to technology companies on how their platforms are used for human rights change, leads WITNESS’ work on the award-winning ObscuraCam and CameraV tools and helped co-found the global Video4Change network. In 2015, he launched the ‘Mobil-Eyes Us’ initiative focused on combining the experience of live and immersive video with the power of distributed networks to drive more meaningful and useful global activism.

He has worked on impactful campaigns worldwide, and video advocacy he has supported has engaged decision-makers in the U.S. Congress, the U.K. Houses of Parliament, and the United Nations and contributed to changes in policy, practice and law. He has created a range of innovative training programs and teaching texts including acting as lead editor on ‘Video for Change: A Guide for Advocacy and Activism’ (Pluto Press, 2005) and developing the two-week intensive curriculum for a Video Advocacy Institute.

Internationally recognized for his expertise on emerging forms of advocacy he has spoken at the White House, Davos, TedX, the WIRED conference and at the Amnesty Global Activism meeting. Among his publications in human rights, social entrepreneurship and visual media journals including WIRED, the Journal of Human Rights Practice, First Monday, American Anthropologist and Information, Communication and Society are Cameras Everywhere: Ubiquitous Video Documentation of Human Rights, New Forms of Video Advocacy and Concerns about Safety, Security, Dignity and Consent (2010) and Kony 2012 Through A Prism of Video Advocacy Practices and Trends (2012) in the Journal of Human Rights Practice (OUP, 2010); Remixing Human Rights: Rethinking civic expression, representation and personal security in online video in First Monday, 2012, and Ubiquitous witnesses: Who creates the evidence and the live(d) experience of human rights violations in Information, Communication and Society, 2015. In 2011 he was a co-editor of WITNESS' report: Cameras Everywhere: Current Challenges And Opportunities At The Intersection Of Human Rights, Video And Technology

Sam was a 2010 Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Resident on the future of video-based advocacy and selected in 2012 as a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. In 2013 he was a Knight News Challenge winner, a Visiting Futurist at the University of Maryland Future of Information Alliance and an Institute for the Future 'Future for Good' Fellow on the future of activism. In 2015 he was a Gifted Citizen prize awardee of the Ciudad de Las Ideas and in 2016 a WIRED Innovation Fellow and New Media Ventures Innovation Fund awardee. Sam has an MA in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School, attending as a Kennedy Memorial Scholar, and a BA from the University of Oxford. He is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on the Future of Human Rights, and of the Technology Advisory Board of the International Criminal Court. He blogs