Helen Margetts is Professor of Society and the Internet and Professorial Fellow at Mansfield College. She is a political scientist specialising in the relationship between digital technology and government, politics and public policy. She is an advocate for the potential of multi-disciplinarity and computational social science for our understanding of political behaviour and development of public policy in a digital world. She has published over a hundred books, articles and policy reports in this area, including Political Turbulence: How Social Media Shape Collective Action (with Peter John, Scott Hale and Taha Yasseri, 2015); Paradoxes of Modernization (with Perri 6 and Christopher Hood, 2010); Digital Era Governance (with Patrick Dunleavy, 2006, 2008); and The Tools of Government in the Digital Age (with Christopher Hood, 2007).
In the academic year 2025-6 Helen is on sabbatical leave and is spending time at the LSE, where she has been appointed Visiting Professor and Senior Adviser in the LSE Data Science Institute, working on a vision for AI and the social sciences.
From 2018-2025 Helen was Director of the Public Policy Programme at The Alan Turing Insitute, the UK’s national institute for data science and artificial intelligence. The programme worked with over 100 policy-making organisations to research and develop ways of using data science and AI to improve policy-making and service provision, foster government innovation and establish a framework for the responsible development and deployment of AI and in government.
Helen sits on the UK Home Office Scientific Advisory Council (HOSAC), the United Nations Committee of Experts on Public Administration (UN CEPA, from 2025), the UK Smart Data Council, the Advisory Board of the Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science at the University of Oxford and the Board of the International Conference of Computational Social Science. She was founding Editor-in-chief of the journal Policy and Internet.
In 2020 Helen was appointed Distinguished Affiliated Professor at the Technical University of Munich, Germany and awarded the Mayer-Struckmann Prize by the Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf for “outstanding research in the social sciences and humanities on ‘Digitization and Democracy.'” In 2019 she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA). In March-April she held the John F Kluge Senior Chair in Technology and Society at the Library of Congress, Washington DC. She was awarded an OBE for services to social and political science in the 2019 New Year’s Honours List. In 2018 she was awarded the Friedrich Schiedel Prize by the Technical University of Munich, for research and research leadership in politics and technology. Her co-authored book Political Turbulence won the W.J.Mckenzie Prize of the UK Political Studies Association for best politics book in 2017. She was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2011. Earlier awards include winning with Patrick Dunleavy the ‘Political Scientists Making a Difference’ award in 2003 from the UK Political Studies Association, in part for a series of policy reports on Government on the Internet for the UK National Audit Office (1999-2009).
Professor Margetts joined the OII in 2004 from University College London where she was a Professor in Political Science and Director of the School of Public Policy. She began her career as a computer programmer and systems analyst with Rank Xerox after receiving her BSc in mathematics from the University of Bristol. She returned to study at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1989, completing an MSc in Politics and Public Policy in 1990 and a PhD in Government in 1996. She worked as a researcher at LSE from 1991 to 1994 and a lecturer at Birkbeck College, University of London from 1994 to 1999.
Please note that Helen is on sabbatical for the 2025-2026 academic year and is not able to accept new DPhil students for 2026-27.
Digital government, public management, public policy, collective action, political participation, democracy, political science, artificial intelligence data science, experiments.
Digital government, public management reform, tools of public policy, artificial intelligence and public policy, collective action, political participation, social science experiments, social data science/computational social science, alternative electoral systems, political extremism.
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".
This project seeks to understand how citizens listen and speak to public institutions, and how alternative AI-based models and framing might encourage democratic communication.
This project seeks to quantify trends and changes in the volatility of public opinion before and after widespread use of social media, and to study how social information can drive public opinion.
This project, and the resulting report, provides a first step in the assessment of data financing as a mechanism for social good in the data economy.
I hold the Chair in Society and the Internet, endowed by the OII’s founding donor, the philanthropist Dame Stephanie Shirley. I am currently seconded for the majority of my time to The Alan Turing Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, which is a partnership between the UK government and thirteen partner universities, including the University of Oxford. I direct the Turing Institute’s Public Policy Programme, which is funded only from public sources, with the majority of funding coming from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. I sit on two government boards: the Home Office Scientific Advisory Council, and the UK government’s Digital Economy Council, chaired by the Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport, for which I am not remunerated. I also sit on the Board of the Ada Lovelace Institute for Data Ethics, which is funded through the Nuffield Foundation and for which I receive an honorarium.
With Dr Carl Benedikt Frey, Professor Helen Margetts, and Dr Keegan McBride
Watch OII experts Prof. Carl Frey and Prof. Helen Margetts as they explore social sciences' critical role in preparing us for the future.
With Dr Victoria Nash, Professor Philip Howard, Professor Helen Margetts, Dr Andrew Graham, and Professor William H. Dutton
Join us for a panel discussion, with OII Directors past and present, reflecting on what the OII has achieved in the last 20 years, and how it hopes to address current and future technology challenges going forward.
With Professor Helen Margetts and Professor Ben MacArthur
Prof Helen Margetts, Professor of Society and the Internet, OII and Director, Public Policy Programme at The Alan Turing Institute in discussion with Ben MacArthur, Professor within Mathematical Sciences at the University of Southampton.
With Peter Tufano, Professor Helen Margetts, Professor Bitange Ndemo, Professor Sandy Pentland, and Dr Linnet E. M. Taylor
Peter Tufano (University of Oxford) Prof. Helen Margetts (University of Oxford), Prof. Bitange Ndemo (University of Nairobi Business School), Prof. Sandy Pentland (MIT) and Dr Linnet Taylor (Tilburg University).
24 September 2025
A new paper from the Tony Blair Institute for Change, featuring a guest contribution from the OII’s Professor Helen Margetts, calls for government action to build better public trust in AI.
13 September 2024
A new report from the Tony Blair Institute, co-authored by leading AI figures including two Oxford Internet Institute researchers, has set out recommendations for government ahead of a future ‘AI Bill’.
22 August 2024
New analysis from political science experts at OII and LSE highlights the rise in digital government technologies and opportunities for the new UK government to deliver AI fuelled changes in public services.
19 August 2024
The new government faces an urgent challenge: revitalising the UK's crumbling public services without major increases in public spending. OII researchers propose a roadmap for developing a more productive and equitable public services.
BBC World Service, 25 October 2025
Professor Helen Margetts speaks to the BBC World Service 'Pick of the World' programme about the spread of misinformation, the power of social media and their impact on democracy.
BBC Radio 4, 15 October 2025
Helen Margetts from the Oxford Internet Institute discusses a recent report by the National Centre for Social research, which shows that political orientation shapes attitudes toward AI technologies and their regulation.
The Register, 15 August 2025
Whitehall might talk a big game when it comes to IT, but so far the words haven't fit the picture. Its own State of Digital Government report, released in January, found the central government's IT portfolio wanting.
DPhil Student
Mahsa Alimardani is a DPhil candidate that is completing her research part-time at the OII on information controls and political communication in authoritarian settings, with a specific look at Iran.
DPhil Student
Lisa-Maria Neudert is a DPhil Student researching platform governance and regulation in response to mis/disinformation.
DPhil Student
Kobi is a PhD candidate in Social Data Science and Clarendon Scholar at the OII. Kobi’s doctoral research evaluates the capabilities of artificial intelligence systems to influence human attitudes, behaviour, and cognition.
DPhil Student
Chloe is a PhD candidate and Clarendon Scholar at the Oxford Internet Institute, researching the use of emerging technologies, including AI, in the public sector, civil service reform, and state capacity.
DPhil Student
Başak is a PhD student in Social Data Science at the Oxford Internet Institute. Her research lies at the intersection of human-AI interaction, political science, communication and computational linguistics.
DPhil Student
Cassidy Bereskin is a PhD researcher and Clarendon Scholar at the Oxford Internet Institute specialising in the efficacy of content disclosure interventions for combatting synthetic visual disinformation.
DPhil Student
Nathan researches the state in an age of digital era government. He draws on his BA at Cambridge, where he focused on the history of technology and temporality, and his experience at start-ups and a government-focused technology company.
Former DPhil Student
Rami Amin focused on the use of experimental methods to explore political science research questions and themes. His thesis investigated the impact of visibility and transparency on democratic participation and civic behavior.
Former DPhil Student
Amanda Clarke is an OII DPhil alumna. Her DPhil research examined the tension between emerging models of online government-citizen engagement and the tenets and practices of public sector bureaucracies.
Former DPhil Student
Max Loubser is a DPhil student at the OII and Magdalen College. His thesis research is on governance in peer production projects with a focus on Wikipedia.
Former Research Associate
Tom Nicholls is a Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute studying the analysis of news texts using computational methods and the development of new methods for studying political behaviour online.
Former DPhil Student
Roy Nyberg is an OII DPhil student. He has interests in the area of organizational theory and technological innovation.
Former Research Associate
Bertram Vidgen's research focuses on far-right extremism in online contexts. An alumnus of the OII DPhil programme, he is engaged in ongoing collaborative research as a member of the Public Policy Programme at the Turing Institute.
DPhil student, Blavatnik School of Government
Former DPhil Student
Dr Linda Li is an LSE Fellow in Advanced Quantitative Methods in the Department of Methodology and an alumna of the Oxford Internet Institute.
Former Teaching Assistant (NLP)
Paul was a DPhil student in Social Data Science concerned with improving natural language processing methods for hate speech detection and other applications.
Former DPhil Student
Charles was a doctoral student at the Oxford Internet Institute. His research focuses on the ethics and politics of federated digital identity systems.
Former DPhil Student
Thomas Vogl works at the intersection of public administration, organizational studies, and digital change. His thesis explores public sector organizational memory in the digital age.
