The Oxford Internet Institute (OII) at the University of Oxford has appointed Dr Mohsen Mosleh to the role of Associate Professor in Social Data Science.

Dr Mosleh – who also becomes a Governing Body Fellow at Wolfson College – will engage in advanced research and teaching on understanding human online behaviour in social networks from a computational/data science and cognitive psychology perspective. In his work, he studies online misinformation, collective decision making, and social network dynamics. His work combines observational studies and randomized field experiments on social media platforms, digital lab experiments, and computational modelling.

Landmark co-authored papers include ‘Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online’ published in Nature and ‘Measuring exposure to misinformation from political elites on Twitter’ published in Nature Communications.

Mosleh is a critically acclaimed scholar and has received the Meta Foundational Integrity & Social Impact Research Award, Google Scholar Research Program Award, British Academy Award, and the British Science Associate Award for his research.

Dr Vicki Nash, Director, Associate Professor and Senior Policy Fellow, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford said, “I’m delighted to appoint Mohsen Mosleh as Associate Professor in Social Data Science at the OII. He brings with him a wealth of knowledge and experience in the study of human online behaviour in social networks and will add great methodological expertise in the analysis of large-scale social media data. We look forward to welcoming him to the department.”

Dr Mosleh, incoming Associate Professor in Social Data Science, Oxford Internet Institute said: “I’m pleased to be joining the OII, a world-leading interdisciplinary institute that focuses on addressing the pressing societal challenges of today’s digital world. I’m excited about the opportunity to conduct groundbreaking work of theoretical significance as well as translating it to application and policy insights.”

He joins from the University of Exeter Business School, where he was Senior Lecturer. He is also a research affiliate at MIT Sloan School of Management and was previously a Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. Mosleh has a PhD in Engineering with a minor in Data Science from the Stevens Institute of Technology, and an MBA from the Sharif University of Technology.

Sir Tim Hitchens, President of Wolfson College, University of Oxford, commented: “we’re delighted to welcome Mohsen into the interdisciplinary Wolfson community. He brings engineering, computer science and social science skills together on an issue which affects us all. I’m very pleased he will be calling Oxford home.”

Dr Mosleh will take up his post at the OII in October 2024.

About the OII The Oxford Internet Institute (OII) is a multidisciplinary research and teaching department of the University of Oxford, dedicated to the social science of the Internet. Drawing from many different disciplines, the OII works to understand how individual and collective behaviour online shapes our social, economic and political world. Since its founding in 2001, research from the OII has had a significant impact on policy debate, formulation and implementation around the globe, as well as a secondary impact on people’s wellbeing, safety and understanding. Drawing on many different disciplines, the OII takes a combined approach to tackling society’s big questions, with the aim of positively shaping the development of the digital world for the public good. https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/

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