Gabrielle Joni Verreault is a doctoral student in bioethics at the School of Public Health at the Université de Montréal, working under the supervision of Bryn Williams-Jones. She focuses on the societal and health impacts of digital technologies. Involved in the cybersecurity ecosystem, she views this field as the equivalent of public health in the digital world. This perspective is further reinforced by her regular participation in the cybersecurity podcast “La French Connection,” where she shares her ethical analyses.

Her creative master’s project proposed an innovative way to explain the Montreal Declaration for a Responsible Development of AI to a broad audience through a graphic novel – accompanied by an educational guide – now published by Atelier 10. Since February 2022, Gabrielle has been engaged in activism and humanitarian aid to help Ukrainian civilians affected by the Russian invasion, first from Canada and Poland, and then on the ground in Ukraine.

Her experiences have shaped her doctoral project on civilian mobilization and their use of modern technologies to engage in the war. Delving into initiatives in cybersecurity, with modified drones and meme culture, she documents the values and motivations of civilians opposing the Russian invasion. Her goal is to develop an ethical guide for civilian engagement, aimed at raising awareness of the unintended consequences of their actions and protecting them from these.

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gabrielle.veilleux-verreault@umontreal.ca