Hinako Sugiyama

Hinako Sugiyama is an international human rights lawyer and a faculty member at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, where she supervises the work of the International Justice Clinic. Hinako analyzes how states and companies’ conduct impacts people’s lives and ideas, particularly those placed under power, and supports them in resisting surveillance and expressing themselves more. Her tools include multidisciplinary research, litigation, and policy advocacy, as well as coalition building. Currently, she is working on issues such as targeted surveillance of journalists and human rights defenders in Sub-Saharan Africa. Before joining UC Irvine, Hinako served as a Columbia Global Public Service Fellow at Access Now and a legal intern at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Previously, she worked at an international law firm in Tokyo, leading cross-border investigations and remediation of multinational companies’ misconduct, such as corruption and fraud in Vietnam, and improving corporate compliance programs. Hinako earned her B.A. from Keio University in Tokyo, J.D. at Hitotsubashi Law School in Tokyo, and LL.M. at Columbia Law School in New York. She is a qualified lawyer in Japan and the US.