About me
I'm Chair in Data Science and Government at the University of Birmingham, jointly appointed in Government and Computer Science. I also serve as Deputy Director and Head of Research at the Institute for Data and AI, Turing Academic Lead for the Birmingham–Alan Turing Institute partnership, and Founding Director of the Centre for AI in Government.
How can AI strengthen rather than erode democratic governance? My research works across three strands: the cognitive foundations of political information processing, transparent measurement and surveillance infrastructure, and the governance of democratic institutions in the AI age.
Research
1. Cognitive Foundations of Political Information Processing
The NeuroCognitiveShield project (MRC, £1.2m, with the Centre for Human Brain Health) uses fMRI to study when citizens engage thoughtfully versus defensively with counter-attitudinal political content, and whether adaptive AI systems can be designed to support reflective engagement.
2. Transparent Measurement and Surveillance Infrastructure
The UN General Debate Corpus (10,000+ speeches, approximately 30,000 downloads) is now standard infrastructure in international relations research, adopted by the UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs. PolitiCause introduces annotation schemes for causal claims in political language: who is said to cause what. CATALYSE (Horizon Europe, €10m) develops digital nowcasting for climate-sensitive health conditions across 52 conditions in the UK.
3. Democratic Institutions in the AI Age
One research stream uses LLM multi-agent systems to simulate coalition government formation, with agents maintaining consistent ideological positions across multi-party negotiations. As Working Group 5 Lead in the Lancet Countdown Europe and a member of WG5 in the global Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, I develop governance indicators that track whether governments are translating climate-health commitments into policy. The European Commission now uses these indicators to assess member state progress.
Impact
The UN General Debate Corpus is operational infrastructure for the UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs. Lancet Countdown indicators have contributed to changes in national climate-health strategy across Europe. Executive programmes on AI governance have trained more than 200 civil servants across the European Commission, UN, and UK Government. The Data Science Summer School (Hertie School) reached 3,000 participants from over 70 countries.
The BSc AI and Public Policy at Birmingham builds computational fluency through political and social science problems. This sits alongside MSc programmes in AI and Government, AI and Sustainable Development, and AI Implementation in Healthcare.
Contact
I welcome collaboration at the intersection of AI and democratic governance. Please get in touch via the email address on my CV.
Location:
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK
