DDCxTrygFonden fellowship cohort 2025
We are very excited to announce our 2025 DDCxTrygFonden fellowship cohort! The fellowship program is funded by and will generate will generate new insights into how digital technologies affect democratic institutions and processes, and how citizens, businesses, and decision-makers can best navigate in the digital world.
The program offers great flexibility: some fellows will begin at the end of 2024, while others will join in early or mid-2025. The newly appointed fellows come from various fields, including journalism, communication, computer science, and media studies. They will be affiliated with the Digital Democracy Centre for periods ranging from three months to one year, where they will work on projects and issues related to the Digital Democracy Centre’s research interests.
For this second round of our fellowship program, we have a diverse cohort of nine fellows with journalistic and academic backgrounds:
From left to right: Heidi Røsok-Dahl, Anders Høeg Nissen, Sarah Grevy Gotfredsen, Luc Edixhoven, Guna Spurava, Lasse Hørbye Nielsen, Niels G. Mede, Esben Seerup, Fabian Prochazka
• Heidi Røsok-Dahl is a PhD fellow at Oslo Metropolitan University in Oslo researching how legacy media reach young people with news, specifically through an ethnographic fieldwork at the Norwegian PSM. She is part of the project ‘Engaging the Next Generation: A Comparative Study of Constructive Journalism in Norway and Denmark’ with Morten Skovsgaard as her mentor. The project focusses on reaching youth digitally with news in NRK and DR.
| Email: heidro@oslomet.no | Bluesky: heidro.bsky.social | LinkedIn: | X:
• Anders Høeg Nissen is an indie tech communicator and podcaster trying to balance fascination and dysphoria in a hypercomplex world. He is part of the project ‘Take the Power Back – rethinking and redistributing AI to facilitate democratic debate’ with Lene Heiselberg as his mentor. The project explores the topic of AI and democracy by looking at methods and ideas for creating and using AI tools that are under our own control, as individuals or as a society, to further public and political debate. The project will also attempt to address the bigger questions of how these technologies and services might affect the democratic debate and political processes, and if there even is a potential for a "harnessed" AI to become a positive democratic force at all?
| | LinkedIn: | Mastodon: @4nd3rs@mastodon.social | Bluesky: @4nd3rs.dk
• Sarah G. Gotfredsen is a fellow at the Digital Democracy Center (DDC) and an investigative journalist at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism. She is part of theproject ‘Power in Numbers? Community Notes’ Efficiency During the 2024 U.S. Election’ with Pantelis Analytis as her mentor. At the DDC, she researches crowdsourced fact-checking systems on social media platforms and the wisdom of the crowd in combating misinformation.
Bluesky: @sarahgrevy.bsky.social | Email: sgg2140@columbia.edu
• Luc Edixhoven is part of the project "Causality Analysis for X-IDF” with Fabrizio Montesi as his mentor. Luc is a computer science Postdoc Fellow and will be working on extracting and analyzing information from mathematical models for data flows, as part of a project to give users more insight in and control over the way their data is used on the internet
• Guna Spurava holds a Ph.D. in Media Education from Tampere University (Finland) and is currently a research fellow at the Digital Democracy Center. She is part of the project ‘Citizens' Freedom to Choose, and Algorithmic Content Recommendation in a Digitalised Society’ and Arjen van Dalen as her mentor. Her research interests lie at the intersection of media education and media regulation, with a particular emphasis on their shared role in supporting citizens' rights in an evolving digital media environment increasingly dominated by global platform companies. At the Digital Democracy Center, her research focuses on AI-driven algorithmic content recommendation and related regulatory measures
LinkedIn: | Email: guna@sam.sdu.dk
• Lasse Hørbye Nielsen is a Former Chief-in-Editor, TrygFonden Fellow, specializing in leadership training and data-driven approaches in the media industry. He is part of the project ‘How strong media leadership can revitalize journalism as a vocation in the digital age’ and Peter Bro as his mentor. His fellowship project focuses on designing a hybrid (interactive and analog) leadership training game tailored to the media industry. The game combines fun and engaging teaching methods with practical learning, exploring how data-driven decision-making can balance organizational goals while maintaining journalistic vocation and integrity.
LinkedIn: | Email: lassehoerbye@gmail.com
• Niels Mede is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zurich who studies science communication, focusing on digital media, public attitudes and backlash to scientists, and survey methods. He is part of the project ‘Online harassment of scientists: Investigating bystander perceptions and developing evidence-informed countermeasures through experimental research and co-creation’ and Lena Frischlich as his mentor. He leads a research project on people’s attitudes and reactions to online attacks against scientists during his DDC×TrygFonden Fellowship. The project investigates how Danish, Swiss, and German social media users perceive and engage with such attacks and counterspeech by other users. In a second step, science communication practitioners, journalists, and policymakers discuss the results and develop solutions to anti-science harassment in a co-creation workshop.
| | Bluesky: @nielsmede.bsky.social | LinkedIn: | Email: n.mede@ikmz.uzh.ch
• Esben Seerup is a fellow at Constructive Institute (2024-2025), former CEO at TV 2 Fyn (2012-2024) and former managing editor at FyensStiftstidende (1998-2012). He is part of the project ‘Digital democracy for real: How “The Five” - five different, public, collaborative, digital and constructive methods - pave new ways of covering politics for both media, politicians and the people’ with Claes de Vreese as his mentor. Digital democracy for real: How different, public, collaborative, digital and constructive methods can pave new ways of covering politics for both media, politicians, and the people.
Email: es@constructiveinstitute.org | LinkedIn:
• Fabian Prochazka is part of the project ‘Public opinion (mis)perceptions of journalists – the impact of online feedback’ with David Hopmann as his mentor. During his fellowship, he will work on a project investigating the role of social media for public opinion perceptions of journalists. The basic question is whether social media distorts perceptions of public opinion and how these perceptions influence news decisions.
| | Email: fabian.prochazka@uni-erfurt.de | Bluesky: @fprochazka.bsky.social | LinkedIn:
Through the fellowship programme, the nine fellows will have the opportunity to create new knowledge and develop new networks and collaborations with the Digital Democracy Centre, as well as create tangible results, such as contributions to public debate, seminars or workshops. We look forward to following the fellows' projects and collaborating with them on some of today’s big issues!