Luc Rocher is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow and senior research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute. Luc is a fellow at Kellogg College and at Imperial College London’s Data Science Institute.
Luc leads the Synthetic Society Lab, a research group working to make technology and digital power accountable to the public, and guide the development of accountable, sustainable, and safe algorithms that serve the public interest.
Their research investigates the risks posed by large-scale collections of digital human traces from social media to biometrics as well as deployed AI technologies, identifying gaps in how technology is regulated and how risks are documented, and proposing better models for academic research using sensitive human data. Their research currently investigates privacy-enhancing technologies, pricing algorithms in online markets, public sector algorithms, social media recommendation systems, and citizen-led AI efforts.
Luc specialises in human-centred computing approaches to investigate how humans and algorithms interact. Their research develops statistical models to make sense of these complex systems, adversarial machine learning approaches to highlight weaknesses of deployed technologies, and interactive tools to better understand what makes us vulnerable to privacy harms online.
Luc’s research provides technical guidance to the challenges AI poses for competition law in digital platforms and data protection regulation online. Their work in Nature Communications for instance demonstrated the limits of traditional techniques to de-identify and widely share ‘anonymous’ data online, calling for better privacy-preserving frameworks to disseminate and analyse personal data online.
Prior to joining Oxford, Luc received a PhD from the Université catholique de Louvain in 2019 and worked as a researcher at the Data Science Institute and Computational Privacy Group of Imperial College London, at the ENS de Lyon, and at the MIT Media Lab.
Their work has been published in peer-reviewed journals and conferences (Nature Communications, Science Advances, Nature Machine Intelligence, Nature Scientific Data, Usenix Security, JMLR, WWW) and has been covered by 160+ newspapers (New York Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Forbes, El Pais, Scientific American) as well as featured in John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight, BBC World Service, France TV, and Radio Canada. Their research on the limitation of anonymisation practices has been referenced by the European Commission, OECD, World Bank, WEF, FTC, by European data protection authorities, in US legal cases, and led to changes to the UK’s Data Protection Bill.
Luc was General Chair of Hot Topics in Privacy Enhancing Technologies (HotPETS) in 2023 and 2024, and has been Area Chair for the ACM FAccT Conference on Fairness, Accountability and Transparency in 2024 and 2025. They sit on a range of programme committees and have reviewed from numerous journals including Nature, Nature Communications, Science Advances, and Big Data & Society.
Luc leads the Observatory of Anonymity, an international interactive website in 89 countries where visitors can find out what makes them more vulnerable to re-identification and where researchers can test the anonymity of their research data.
Pronouns: they/them.
I am looking for motivated students interested in studying the impact of privacy-enhancing technologies and auditing algorithms used by public institutions and online platforms. Interest in HCI, AI fairness and human-centred evaluations, mathematical modelling and complex systems appreciated (including Bayesian statistics, optimisation, network science, machine learning, Python/Julia programming). Further information on the Synthetic Society Lab website.
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.
In the past five years, my work has been financially supported by UK and Belgian taxpayers, by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Innovate UK, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the John Fell Fund from Oxford University Press, and the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (F.R.S.-FNRS).
I conduct my research in line with the University's academic integrity code of practice.
With Dr Corinne Cath, Nicole (Yung) Au, Dr Ashwin Mathew, and Dr Luc Rocher
We bring together three expert panelists to discuss this topic through their contributions to a recently published book, called Eaten by the Internet.
With Dr Luc Rocher
Dramatic claims about the potential and risks of Artificial Intelligence are now legion. Computers could soon replace most jobs or become sentient warlords.
9 January 2025
Computer scientists at the Oxford Internet Institute, Imperial College London, and UCLouvain have developed a new mathematical model which could help people better understand the risks posed by AI and assist regulators in protecting peoples’ privacy.
19 July 2024
UKRI has announced its latest round of 68 Future Leaders Fellowships, of which the OII's Dr Luc Rocher was one of three Oxford recipients. The funds will enable them to work on making privacy technologies more transparent and accountable.
17 July 2024
Leading experts in privacy at the OII and Imperial College believe traditional approaches to anonymizing data for scientific and societal research are outdated.
8 June 2023
Experts from the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) are calling for better access to platform data for academic and civil society research, in order to understand the impact of platform algorithms
Oxford Mail, 12 January 2025
A new mathematical model developed by the University of Oxford could help people to understand the risks posed by AI and help regulators to protect people's privacy.
Yahoo!, 12 January 2025
A new mathematical model developed by the University of Oxford could help people to understand the risks posed by AI and help regulators to protect people's privacy.
Daily Telegraph, 27 July 2024
Companies are using AI to harvest vast amounts of data from consumers’ online footprints.
DPhil Student
Andrew holds a B.S. in Applied Mathematics from Yale University and an MSc in Social Data Science from the OII. He is a Clarendon Scholar and was previously a Thouron Prize winner at the University of Cambridge (Pembroke College).
DPhil Student
Lujain is a DPhil student in Social Data Science at the OII. Her research sits at the intersection of AI governance and human-centred computing, particularly examining how user autonomy and control are undermined in human-AI interactions.
DPhil Student
Juliette is a Clarendon Scholar at the OII, conducting research on data access, privacy-enhancing technologies, and algorithm auditing.
MSc Student
Yui's research focuses on developing a network visualizer for estimating social group visibility on social media. She holds a BA in International Political Economy from Waseda University in Japan.
MSc Student
Eily holds a BSc in Social Sciences with Data Science from UCL and has worked as a data consultant for the Global Survey of Public Servants. She is interested in the intersection of technology and international development.
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.
Former MSc Student
Eglė was a Shirley Scholar at the Oxford Internet Institute. She holds a degree in Political Science with a minor in Economics from New York University Abu Dhabi.
Former MSc Student
Sydney Kessler holds a BS in Cognitive Science from UC San Diego. Formally a research associate in computational neuroscience, Sydney is especially interested in using AI, NLP, and data scraping as a means of studying social media subcultures.
Former MSc Student
Kaley is an MSc in Social Data Science student at the OII. She is passionate about research and education on systems of oppression. Kaley holds a BS in Criminology and previously worked in crime analysis.
Former MSc Student
Asanilta Fahda holds a BSc in Informatics/Computer Science and worked for 5 years as a software engineer in several international companies ranging from e-commerce, data analytics, to FP&A software. She joined the OII as a Jardine Scholar.
Former MSc Student
Ariana is interested in the social impact of technology. She previously worked as a product consultant for an asset management firm and holds a BA in Information Science and Sociology from Cornell University.
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 Research Assistant
Blue’s work focuses on combing technical expertise with sociological and policy insights to design holistic, accountable and transparent AI systems and assessment tools, as well as studying the societal impact of AI from a more holistic perspective.
Research Assistant
Sofia completed her MSc in Social Data Science and now works as a Research Assistant at the OII, focusing on algorithmic fairness, machine learning, and interactive data visualization.
Former MSc Student
Salma is an MSc student in Social Data Science. She holds a BSc in Economics with a Data Science specialization from New York University. Prior to her postgraduate studies, she was an Associate at the Boston Consulting Group for two years.
