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Global Academic Engagement Outreach

Academic Engagement webpage banner with ICANN logo

Academia and ICANN: Building the Future of the Internet Together

Academia has played a foundational role in the development and stewardship of the Internet. ICANN continues to rely on the expertise, research, and talent of the academic community to inform and strengthen its work on Internet governance, technical coordination, and policy development. From classroom learning to high-level research, the academic sector is a key partner in supporting ICANN and its Mission.

Engaging with ICANN offers academics, including students, educators, and researchers, a chance to contribute to Internet-related work that has real global impact. As technology evolves, ICANN increasingly relies on academics to contribute to the ICANN community and help inform its work. Contributing to the ICANN community as an academic means taking part in meaningful dialogue, accessing global platforms, networking with industry leaders, and contributing to the future of a secure, stable and interoperable Internet.

Photo of ICANN staff engaging with students at a workshop.

How it Works

ICANN's Global Academic Engagement program is designed to forge lasting connections with students, researchers, and academic institutions worldwide. Our goals are to:

  • Promote understanding of ICANN's mission and the Internet's unique identifier systems.
  • Develop future leaders through training, mentorship, and participation in ICANN's multistakeholder model.
  • Support the integration of Internet governance topics into academic curricula.
  • Encourage academic research aligned with ICANN's mission.

Get Involved

Photo of a NextGen participant at ICANN84 in Dublin.

Academic institutions and individuals can engage with ICANN in a variety of ways:

  • Host or Attend Events: ICANN brings subject-matter expertise to academic institutions through engaging lectures, seminars, and technical training. Check out the ICANN Engagement Calendar for events happening in your region.
  • Participate in ICANN's Newcomer Programs: University students 18-30 can apply to NextGen@ICANN for ICANN Public Meetings happening in their region; interested candidates 21 and over from all regions and sectors are welcome to apply to the ICANN Fellowship Program for any future ICANN Public Meeting.
  • Build Your Internet Governance Knowledge Base with ICANN Learn: ICANN Learn is a free platform offering courses in multiple languages on ICANN, the Domain Name System, cybersecurity, and more.

Watch the Video Below to Learn More About ICANN's Newcomer Programs

Resources and Tools

ICANN offers materials and publications that support teaching and research:

Other Internet Governance Educational Organizations and Academic Networks

Get in Touch

To learn more about ICANN's academic initiatives, please email [email protected] or contact your regional ICANN Stakeholder Engagement team.

Domain Name System
Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."