Johanna T. Gunawan

Bouillonstraat 1-3

6221LH Maastricht, Netherlands

Hi – I’m an Assistant Professor of CS and Law at the Maastricht University Law and Tech Lab. I earned my PhD in Cybersecurity at Northeastern University, advised by David Choffnes, Woodrow Hartzog, and Christo Wilson.

My research spans UX, privacy, consumer protections, and law. At present, I’m focusing on dark patterns and manipulative interfaces across multiple contexts – I also study surveillance technologies and privacy erosion.

In industry, I’ve interned at Common Sense Media’s Privacy Program, Vimeo’s Governance, Risk, Compliance, and Privacy team, and previously wrote docs for Rapid7 and Akamai Technologies (Network Standards).

Academically, I’ve been a visiting PhD intern with Yixin Zou at the Max Planck Institute of Security and Privacy, and earned my M.S. in Cybersecurity as an ALIGN Scholar as well as a B.A. in Political Science & International Affairs at Northeastern University.

news

Jan 16, 2025	Thrilled to share that our (Sarah Gillespie, David Choffnes, Christo Wilson, and Woodrow Hartzog) paper Promises, Promises: Understanding Claims Made in Social Robot Consumer Experiences has been conditionally accepted to appear in CHI 2025 this spring! Stay tuned for a preprint.
Nov 01, 2024	Many thanks to the wonderful students and faculty at Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law for the wonderful centennial symposium for the Indiana Law Review! I had a wonderful time presenting our (w/ Woodrow Hartzog, Neil Richards, David Choffnes, and Christo Wilson) work framing dark patterns as disloyal design. On to updating the draft, forthcoming spring 2025.
Aug 01, 2024	Gig Work at What Cost?: Exploring Privacy Risks of Gig Work Platform Participation in the U.S. is now live for PETS’25 Issue 1 here.
Aug 01, 2024	Our (Amogh Pradeep[1], Alvaro Feal, David Choffnes, and Woodrow Hartzog) paper Gig Work at What Cost?: Exploring Privacy Risks of Gig Work Platform Participation in the U.S. has been accepted to appear in PETS 2025!
Jul 17, 2024	Thesis defended! Thank you to all who came – and of course eternal thanks to my wonderful advisors and committee.

selected publications

CHI

FORTHCOMING: Promises, Promises: Understanding Claims Made in Social Robot Consumer Experiences

Johanna T. Gunawan, Sarah E. Gillespie, David Choffnes, and 2 more authors

In Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Yokohama, Japan , 2025

Bib PDF

@inproceedings{gunawan-2025-chi,
  author = {Gunawan, Johanna T. and Gillespie, Sarah E. and Choffnes, David and Hartzog, Woodrow and Wilson, Christo},
  title = {FORTHCOMING: Promises, Promises: Understanding Claims Made in Social Robot Consumer Experiences},
  year = {2025},
  publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
  address = {New York, NY, USA},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
  articleno = {179},
  numpages = {27},
  keywords = {UX design, human factors, IoT, dark patterns},
  location = {<conf-loc><city>Yokohama</city>, <country>Japan</country> </conf-loc>},
  series = {CHI '25},
}

Ind. L. J.

FORTHCOMING: Dark Patterns as Design Loyalty

Johanna Gunawan, Woodrow Hartzog, Neil Richards, and 2 more authors

In Indiana University Law Journal, 2024

Bib

@inproceedings{gunawan-2024-ilj,
  title = {FORTHCOMING: Dark Patterns as Design Loyalty},
  author = {Gunawan, Johanna and Hartzog, Woodrow and Richards, Neil and Choffnes, David and Wilson, Christo},
  year = {2024},
  publisher = {Indiana University School of Law},
  booktitle = {Indiana University Law Journal},
  series = {100 Ind. L. J.},
}