Dr Scott A. Hale is Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, where he leads the Equitable Access to Quality Information Lab (eaqilab). His research develops and applies computational and social science methods to understand how digital technologies, such as social media, large language models, and algorithmic systems shape society, focusing on how people discover, evaluate, and use information online to make important life decisions.
Scott is also Director of Research at Meedan, a nonprofit technology organisation developing tools to support digital literacy and civic engagement. He has worked internationally, including in Japan, and is committed to mentoring early-career researchers. In 2022, he received a Teaching Excellence Award from the University of Oxford’s Social Sciences Division, recognizing his outstanding contributions to teaching and supervision.
LLM alignment, bias, bilingualism, applications of machine learning, natural language processing (NLP)
Due to my administrative role and number of current supervisees, it is likely I will only be allocated a very small number of students, if any, in the upcoming admissions cycle. Applicants can nominate multiple potential supervisors, and I encourage those considering me as a potential supervisor to nominate at least one other faculty member. Given the volume of email enquiries, I am unfortunately unable to respond to every email about doctoral supervision.
My research continues to examine equitable access to quality information, with an increasing focus on holistic evaluations of GenAI systems (e.g., considering models alongside agentic tools and other factors). I’m also particularly interested in the effects on downstream tasks.
By Helen Margetts, Peter John, Scott Hale, and Taha Yasseri
This book demonstrates how data science and experimentation with social data can provide a methodological toolkit for understanding, shaping, and perhaps even predicting the outcomes of a new "democratic turbulence".
The Digital Good Network (DGN) delivers an interdisciplinary, social science-led research programme centred on the urgent, neglected question of what the digital good should look like and how it can be achieved.
This programme supports research on AI, Government and Policy.
Media narratives on migration are perceived to have a significant impact on policy decisions and public attitudes toward migration. The project applies tools and methods to enable practitioners to make more effective policy decisions.
With Dr Scott A. Hale
Countering misinformation in partnership with diaspora communities by Dr Scott Hale
With Tim Hwang and Dr Scott A. Hale
The OII welcomes Visiting Policy Fellow Tim Hwang, to discuss his new book 'Subprime Attention Crisis' with Dr Scott A. Hale. Tim is a researcher and lawyer, working at the intersection of technology, public policy and economics.
With Dr Scott A. Hale
In this session, part of International fact-checking network Global Fact 7 Virtual, panelists will present ongoing research on misinformation and fact-checking from around the world.
With Dr Scott A. Hale
Monitoring the health conversation online. Detecting notable shifts through word embeddings and semantic change. Presentation by Jenna Sherman, Nat Gyenes, Ashkan Kazemi, and Scott Hale.
25 November 2025
Researchers from the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford will be at NeurIPS 2025 in San Diego from 1- 7 December, 2025, contributing to one of the world’s leading AI conferences.
27 October 2025
The OII is pleased to announce Dr Scott A. Hale appointed as its next Director, and Dr Kathryn Eccles as Deputy Director.
28 July 2025
Researchers including DPhil students from the Oxford Internet Institute will present new research and share recent findings at the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) in Vienna.
23 April 2024
Personalisation has the potential to democratise who decides how LLMs behave, but comes with risks for individuals and society, say Oxford researchers.
The Media Leader, 29 August 2025
Millions of social media users in the EU are posting in languages without any human moderation oversight, according to a new study of recently mandated transparency data under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), conducted by OII researchers.
Science, 26 February 2016
Review of ‘Political Turbulence’ by Helen Margetts, Peter John, Taha Yasseri and Scott Hale.
MIT Technology Review, 13 December 2013
Wikipedia's various language editions often carry entirely different content. Scott Hale has identified a small band of multilingual editors who are working to change that.
DPhil Student
Chris is a DPhil student at the OII and a doctoral student at the Alan Turing Institute.
DPhil Student
Hannah is a 4th year DPhil student in Social Data Science at the OII and a Research Scientist at the UK AI Security Institute. Her research explores how to align AI systems with the values and preferences of diverse human populations.
DPhil Student
Amy is a DPhil candidate. She researches empathic communication with digital audiences.
DPhil Student
Tarah Wheeler is an information security executive, social scientist in the area of international conflict, author, and poker player. She is CEO of information security company Red Queen Dynamics.
DPhil Student
Calvin is a DPhil candidate in Social Data Science at the Oxford Internet Institute. His research examines how digital technologies shape the diffusion of misinformation, the formation of ideology, and the dynamics of public opinion.
DPhil Student
Yixin is a DPhil student in Social Data Science. Her research focuses on examining online communication on social media sites, and designing social systems to better support it.
DPhil Student
Manuel is a second-year DPhil student in Social Data Science and a Shirley Scholar at the OII. His research is focused on the cross-geographic study of harmful online content moderation.
DPhil Student
Jessica is a DPhil student in Social Data Science, researching the societal impact of research using NLP and knowledge graphs. She holds an MSc in Computer Science and works as a Lead Data Scientist.
DPhil Student
Jude’s research focuses on building computational and machine learning models that can acquire and demonstrate social cognition skills by borrowing from principles in Psychology, Social Sciences and Cognition.
DPhil Student
Jabez is a DPhil student in Social Data Science at the OII. His research focuses on misinformation and developing automated fact-checking methods for misinformation in multiple modalities and across multilingual contexts.
Former MSc Student
MSc Thesis: Linguistic and social niche size impacts word fate across word classes on Reddit
Former MSc Student
Melanie Bumpas is interested in the formation and manipulation of public opinion online. She previously worked in Shanghai for Kantar Media CIC, a social media analysis and consulting firm, and holds a BA in International Studies and Chinese.
Former MSc Student
Sharon was an MSc student with research interests in the development of smart cities, the Internet of Things (IoT) and the ideas of improving disabled accessibility through data-driven, human-centred approaches.
Former MSc Student
Prior to the OII, Lindsay worked with several international and US-based organizations working to solve social problems through the use of technology and data. She has a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Virginia.
Former MSc Student
Julian is interested in computational social science and forecasting methods. In his research he is developing modelling techniques that produce more accurate and granular predictions of event outcomes.
Former MSc Student
I worked for the Japanese government and hold a MSc in Meteorology and BS in Physics. My interest is the use of big data and artificial intelligence for Disaster Risk Reduction and Weather business.
Former MSc Student
Zachary Levine was an OII MSc student.
Former MSc Student
Zo was an MSc. Social Data Science student with an interest in AI-driven political influence and political life on social media platforms. He previously worked as a Data Specialist at Twitter, and in the AI Policy team at Google.
Former MSc Student
Austin came to the OII with a BA in International Affairs and Economics from Lafayette College. He is passionate about promoting social cohesion and inclusion with technology as demonstrated by his research on automated hate speech detection.
Former MSc Student
Dragos was born in Romania and moved to France aged 5. He studied political sciences and economics at SciencesPo and data science at the LSE. He enjoys reading, chess and thought-provoking debates around a drink.
Former MSc Student
Olivia is interested in how data can improve public policy and improve social inequalities. She holds a BA in Experimental Psychology from the University of Oxford.
Former MSc Student
Cailean is a DPhil Candidate in Social Data Science, whose research concerns the political economy of open source artificial intelligence.
Former MSc Student
Hope Schroeder was an MSc student interested in language data, social networks, XR, and more. She holds a BS in Symbolic Systems with Honors from Stanford University.
Former DPhil Student
Katharina holds a BSc in Business Statistics from Freie University Berlin and Harvard University as well as a MSc in Statistics from Oxford University.
Former MSc Student
Adri holds a BSc in Social Sciences with Quantitative Methods from UCL. Adri is interested to explore algorithmic bias/fairness and would like to answer similar social science questions with the use of advanced computational methods.
Former MSc Student
Jose graduated from Ateneo de Manila University with a BA in Political and Social Sciences. He was a university lecturer prior to joining the OII, teaching NLP in the context of social science research.
DPhil Student
Yixin is a DPhil student in Social Data Science. Her research focuses on examining online communication on social media sites, and designing social systems to better support it.
Former MSc Student
Elgar is interested in understanding society by capitalising on the digitisation of human behaviours. He has studied online public opinion and the use of technology in social movements. He is a journalism graduate from the University of Hong Kong.
Former MSc Student
Junyao holds two bachelor degrees from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Waseda University in Japan. Her undergraduate study is funded by Bai Xian Asian Institute. She joined the OII as a Clarendon scholar.
DPhil student, Department of Education, University of Oxford
DPhil Student
Jonathan is a DPhil student in Social Data Science at the OII. Jonathan's research focus is socio-technical evaluations of multimodal human-AI interactions.
Former MSc Student
Desiree is a computational AI ethics researcher. Her research focuses on evaluating the alignment of social media recommender systems with human values.
Former MSc Student
Adriano uses data science in human rights investigations. He is a journalist, educator and researcher with a master's degree in Communication from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
Former MSc Student
Gareth is focused on using data science to support policymaking and ensure society’s resilience against disinformation. He holds a BSc (Hons) in Economics, Politics, and International Studies.
Former MSc Student
Elad has both industry and academic experience in NLP data analysis, LLM research, and statistical optimization. He holds a BSc in Philosophy and Data Science. His interests focus on AI interpretability in social domains.
Former Research Associate
Dorian Quelle is a PhD Candidate in Quantitative Network Science (UZH). He works as a Data Scientist, focusing on countering foreign state propaganda.
Former MSc Student
Adriano uses data science in human rights investigations. He is a journalist, educator and researcher with a master's degree in Communication from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
Former MSc Student
Michelle is an MSc student in Social Data Science. She holds a BSc in Economics and Business Analytics. Prior to her postgraduate studies, she gained experiences in online marketplaces and consulting.
Former MSc Student
Ajai is a former investigative journalist and long reads editor. He works on how political mis-/disinformation spreads via messaging apps like WhatsApp.
The course will teach computational complexity and how to profile and increase the computational efficiency of Python code. It will also cover parallel and distributed computing approaches, and discuss data storage and retrieval techniques.
