Iria Puyosa is a senior research fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, leading a project on encrypted point-to-point messaging platforms.

She holds a PhD from the University of Michigan and a master’s in communication from the Andres Bello Catholic University in Venezuela. Puyosa is a member of the Toda Peace Institute’s International Research Advisory Council, advising on social media, technology, and peacebuilding. She was previously an associate professor at the Central University of Venezuela. Puyosa was also previously a Craig M. Cogut visiting professor of Latin American studies in the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Brown University. She was once a guest instructor on communication for Civil Resistance Campaigns at the Americas Regional Institute on Strategic Nonviolent Action, organized by the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict and Facultad Latinoamerica de Ciencias Sociales Ecuador. Puyosa served as the 2018-2020 chair of the Section on Venezuelan Studies in the Latin American Studies Association. 

Puyosa has researched information warfare, including coordinated propaganda, disinformation, politically motivated trolling, cyber harassment, lawfare, censorship, and surveillance in Venezuela, Ecuador, Cuba, Nicaragua, and the United States. She has also advised several Latin American political organizations and nongovernmental organizations on social media for political mobilization and digital policies. Recently, Puyosa authored “21st Century Authoritarianism in the Digital Sphere” and “Asymmetrical Information Warfare in the Venezuelan Contested Media Spaces.”