Johanna T. Gunawan

my dog at Constitution Beach, MA

Hi – I’m an Assistant Professor of CS and Law at the Maastricht University Law and Tech Lab.

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.

Before joining Maastricht University, I earned my PhD in Cybersecurity at Northeastern University, advised by David Choffnes, Woodrow Hartzog, and Christo Wilson. 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.

More info in my CV.

(If you’re wondering how to pronounce my name, I’ve gone by both American and European pronunciations of Johanna my whole life–both work!)

news

Oct 12, 2026	Been a busy couple of months! Quite a lot of talks given over the summer – an EU Commission e-Enforcement Academy Webinar on the subscription economy, a SecAppDev dark patterns primer talk, a NordiCHI tutorial sharing the DPs community’s fabulous methodoloical work, and paneling in a conference on personalize privacy assistants. Up next on the docket: paneling for MozFest in Barcelona with an exciting group of folks to discuss restoration of user choice and agency, and later will present the dark patterns and the DSA work at Digital Legal Talks in Utrecht! I’m also teaching a new course for Liebniz University Hannover on the regulation of online choice architecture and – of course – dark patterns this October.
Sep 17, 2026	Congratulations to Aniketh Girish on his paper acceptance at PETS’27: “Sweat, Sync, and Exposure: A Privacy Analysis of Interoperable Health and Fitness Systems in Android” ! Fantastic work done with Srjdan Matic, Joel Reardon, Juan Tapiador, and Narseo Vallina-Rodriguez.
May 11, 2026	Lovely giving a talk in Amsterdam for the Consumer Leadership Academy last Thursday – always nice to see familiar faces and to meet new folks working to improve our digital lives. This month is a busy month – I’ll be at CPDP on a panel regarding neuro-ethics for the Digital Fairness Act, as well as giving a lecture later in May with SecAppDev’26 to bring an interdisciplinary dark patterns intro into the cybersecurity space (my favorite)!
Apr 13, 2026	``Dark Patterns and the DSA’’ is finally published in the CHI’26 Proceedings! Thrilled to be in Barcelona this week for CHI – let’s chat!
Apr 02, 2026	Big congratulations to Iris Xu for a conditionally accepted DIS’26 Provocations Track paper regarding the acceptability of personalized privacy assistants. This work compiled unexpected findings and learnings from a broader, challenging project – it’s great to see all her hard work yield discussion-worthy fruit!

selected publications

CHI

Dark Patterns and the EU Digital Services Act: Mapping Autonomy Violations and Design Factors

Sanju Ahuja, Johanna Gunawan, Nataliia Bielova, and 1 more author

In Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, , Barcelona, Spain, , 2026

Bib HTML

@inproceedings{ahuja-2026-chi,
  title = {Dark Patterns and the EU Digital Services Act: Mapping Autonomy Violations and Design Factors},
  author = {Ahuja, Sanju and Gunawan, Johanna and Bielova, Nataliia and Santos, Cristiana},
  year = {2026},
  publisher = {Association of Computing Machinery},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
  location = {<conf-loc>, <city>Barcelona</city>, <country>Spain</country>, </conf-loc>},
  series = {CHI '26},
  url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3772318.3791479},
}

IPR

Leveraging Interdisciplinary Methods for Evidence Collection in Enforcement: Dark Patterns as a Case Study

Johanna T. Gunawan, Colin M. Gray, Cristiana Santos, and 1 more author

In Internet Policy Review Special Issue: The Craft of Interdisciplinary Research and Methods in Public Interest Cybersecurity, Privacy, and Digital Rights Governance, Nov 2025

Bib HTML

@inproceedings{gunawan-2025-ipr,
  author = {Gunawan, Johanna T. and Gray, Colin M. and Santos, Cristiana and Bielova, Nataliia},
  title = {Leveraging Interdisciplinary Methods for Evidence Collection in Enforcement: Dark Patterns as a Case Study},
  year = {2025},
  month = nov,
  publisher = {Internet Policy Review},
  booktitle = {Internet Policy Review Special Issue: The Craft of Interdisciplinary Research and Methods in Public Interest Cybersecurity, Privacy, and Digital Rights Governance},
  series = {IPR'25 Special Issue},
  url = {https://policyreview.info/articles/analysis/interdisciplinary-methods-dark-patterns},
}

DIS

Towards Key Contributing Factors in Identifying Dark Pattern Autonomy Violations under the EU Digital Services Act

Sanju Ahuja, Johanna Gunawan, Nataliia Bielova, and 1 more author

In Proceedings of the 2025 Designing Interactive Systems Conference, , Funchal, Madeira, Portugal, , Jul 2025

Bib HTML

@inproceedings{ahuja-2025-dis,
  author = {Ahuja, Sanju and Gunawan, Johanna and Bielova, Nataliia and Santos, Cristiana},
  title = {Towards Key Contributing Factors in Identifying Dark Pattern Autonomy Violations under the EU Digital Services Act},
  year = {2025},
  month = jul,
  publisher = {Association of Computing Machinery},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2025 Designing Interactive Systems Conference},
  location = {<conf-loc>, <city>Funchal, Madeira</city>, <country>Portugal</country>, </conf-loc>},
  url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3715668.3736336}
}

Ind. L. J.

Dark Patterns as Design Loyalty

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

In Indiana University Law Journal Symposium Issue, Jul 2025

Bib HTML

@inproceedings{gunawan-2025-ilj,
  title = {Dark Patterns as Design Loyalty},
  author = {Gunawan, Johanna and Hartzog, Woodrow and Richards, Neil and Choffnes, David and Wilson, Christo},
  year = {2025},
  publisher = {Indiana University School of Law},
  booktitle = {Indiana University Law Journal Symposium Issue},
  series = {100 Ind. L. J.},
  volume = {100},
  issue = {4},
  url = {https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=11577&context=ilj},
}