See our past projects

  • A Fairwork Foundation: Towards fair work in the platform economy

    Participants: Professor Mark Graham, Dr Jamie Woodcock

    The Fairwork Foundation will certify online labour platforms, using leverage from workers, consumers, and platforms to improve the welfare and job quality of digital workers.

  • AI & Data Diversity Lab

    Participants: Professor Gina Neff

    This project seeks to advance public understanding of data diversity and the everyday decisions around AI and technology innovation. This will help build better technologies and strengthen the science on diversity in technology-led growth.

  • AI and the Right to Reasonable Algorithmic Inferences

    Participants: Professor Sandra Wachter

    The project will identify weaknesses in general and sectoral regulatory mechanisms - e.g. the limited protections afforded to inferences in data protection law - and argue for greater accountability by establishing a ‘right to reasonable inferences'.

  • Child Protection

    Participants: Dr Victoria Nash, Dr Monica Bulger, Dr Vera Slavtcheva-Petkova

    Work and activities by OII faculty and associates on issues surrounding online child safety and protection.

  • Computational Propaganda

    Participants: Professor Philip Howard, Dr Vidya Narayanan, Dr Dimitra (Mimie) Liotsiou, Lisa-Maria Neudert, Samantha Bradshaw

    This project will focus on how bots, algorithms and other forms of automation are used by political actors in countries around the world.

  • Creative Algorithmic Intelligence: Capabilities and Complementarity

    Participants: Professor Michael Osborne, Professor Rebecca Eynon, Anne Ploin, Dr Paul Duckworth

    This project seeks to map present and future interfaces between human and artificial creative intelligence, and investigate the ways in which creative human/AI collaboration may contribute to human flourishing.

  • Current Affairs 2.0: Agenda setting in the European Union

    Participants: Dr Scott Hale, Fabian Flöck, Przemyslaw Grabowicz, David Jurgens, Chico Camargo

    This project seeks to measure and explain what societal issues are given the highest priorities by media organizations, policy makers, and the general public in different nations and languages of the European Union.

  • Cyber Security Behaviours (CYBERSECURITY)

    Participants: Professor Bertrand Venard, Professor Viktor Mayer-Schönberger

    Through empirical research, this project seeks to understand the determinants of individual cyber security behaviours of students in France and the UK.

  • Elections and the Internet

    Participants: Professor Helen Margetts, Dr Scott A. Hale, Dr Jonathan Bright

    This site collects elections research at the OII. We are interested in exploring the extent to which data from the social web can be used to predict interesting social and political phenomena, especially elections.

  • Ethical auditing for automated decision-making

    Participants: Brent Mittelstadt

    This project defines requirements for ethical auditing of automated decision-making systems.

  • GCRF Decent Work: FAIRWORK in the Platform Economy in the Global South

    Participants: Prof D'Arcy Du Toit, Prof Sandra Fredman, Prof Mark Graham, Prof Richard Heeks, Prof Jean-Paul Van Belle, Dr Jamie Woodcock

    This project aims to understand the contextual, contractual and practical nature of platform work, to identify its shortfall from decent work standards and to contribute to the development of its governance and regulation.

  • GeoNet: Changing Connectivities and the Potentials of Sub-Saharan Africa’s Knowledge Economy

    Participants: Professor Mark Graham, Dr Stefano De Sabbata, Nicolas Friederici, Dr Christopher Foster, Sanna Ojanperä, Dr Mohammad Amir Anwar, Dr Fabian Braesemann, Michel Wahome

    This research project is examining the geographies, drivers, and effects of Sub-Saharan Africa's emerging information economies at a time of changing connectivity and Internet access across the region.

  • Government on the Web

    Participants: Professor Helen Margetts, Dr Tobias Escher, Dr Scott A. Hale, Simon Bastow, Professor Patrick Dunleavy, Oliver Pearce, Jane Tinkler

    Research dedicated to improving knowledge and understanding of e-government and the impact of web-based technologies on government.

  • iLabour: The Construction of Labour Markets, Institutions and Movements on the Internet

    Participants: Professor Vili Lehdonvirta, Dr Otto Kässi, Greetje (Gretta) Corporaal, Dr Alex J. Wood

    The iLabour project is premised on the idea that a fundamental change is taking place in labour markets. It seeks to understand the social and policy implications of this momentous shift.

  • Internet Geographies Leverhulme Prize

    Participants: Prof Mark Graham, Dr Martin Dittus

    As digital augmentations of our world become ever more embedded into everyday life, this project asks where they are, what they are, and who owns, controls, and can shape them.

  • Mapping Playful Spaces in the Museum

    Participants: Dr Kathryn Eccles, Dr Chico Camargo

    This project seeks to use social media data to enhance our understanding of ‘playful’ behaviour across Oxford’s gardens, libraries, and museums, looking for new types of visitor engagement.

  • OxDEG: The Oxford Digital Ethnography Group

    Participants: Professor Eric T. Meyer, Dr Heather Ford, John McManus, Shireen Walton, Dr William Kelly

    OxDEG, the Oxford Digital Ethnography Group, comprises students and faculty members from Oxford University who discuss and share ideas about the evolution of ethnography in a heavily mediated world.

  • Oxford Martin Programme on Misinformation, Science and Media

    Participants: Professor Phil Howard, Professor Rasmus Kleis Nielsen

    In this three-year programme researchers will examine the interplay between systematic misinformation campaigns, news coverage, and increasingly important social media platforms for public understanding of science and technological innovation.

  • Oxford Martin Programme on the Illegal Wildlife Trade

    Participants: Dr Joss Wright

    This project will develop an international hub to track and analyse the global illegal wildlife trade, both online and offline, and develop strategies to reduce the threat of the trade through social policy interventions.

  • OxIS: Oxford Internet Surveys

    Participants: Grant Blank, Julia Lefkowitz

    Research on access, use and attitudes to the Internet in Britain based on biennial surveys covering (for example) digital and social inclusion and exclusion, mobile use, social media, safety and privacy concerns, Internet regulation, and behaviour.