Linda Weigl is a tech policy scholar and postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Information Law. She is part of UVA’s Trust Research Priority Area (Trust RPA), and critically researches the governance of digital technologies, focusing on the political economy of trust and risk, particularly in platforms and identity systems.

Linda has a background in Political Science (Universitá degli Studi di Milano) and European Public Policy (Maastricht University). Triggered by the then-ongoing revision of the EU’s electronic identification and authentication regulation (eIDAS), her doctoral research focussed on digital identity management and self-sovereign identity (SSI) systems. Through a critical lens rooted in Science and Technology Studies, Linda explored how governments and technology providers adopt these systems, and the implications for users’ autonomy and trust.

Her research expanded into broader questions of digital sovereignty and the EU’s regulatory landscape - in particular the legal frameworks of platform and identity systems. Thus, alongside the revised eIDAS regulation, Linda is working on frameworks like the DSA and the DMA. Her work looks at the gaps and risks in these governance frameworks, particularly where they may erode trust or enable power abuses. The issue of trust and its erosion continues in her current research, where, at the Trust RPA, Linda studies how algorithmic technologies disrupt institutional and interpersonal trust.