Research Themes

Our work is organised around a set of interconnected research programs. Most projects are collaborative, team-based, and multi-method.

1. Digital Governance and Regulations

How do digital technologies reshape the exercise of power, the quality of governance, and the rules that bind states, platforms, and citizens? This program examines platform regulation, data governance, civic participation, and the comparative measurement of governance and democracy.

2. Computational and Experimental Methods

This program develops the methodological toolkit of the field: natural language processing and text-as-data, social network analysis, agent-based modelling, causal inference, and the design of online, field, and survey experiments. We treat methods both as research instruments and as objects of study in their own right.

3. Computing and the Social Sciences

Computing is both a tool for social research and a subject of it. We use machine learning and large-scale computational models to measure social and political phenomena at scale, and we study the social, political, and ethical implications of computational systems — from algorithmic decision-making to human–machine communication.

4. Communication, Media and Public Opinion

This program studies information ecosystems in the digital age: misinformation and disinformation, political communication and polarisation, media effects, and the formation and change of public opinion.

5. Data Infrastructure and Open Science

The Lab invests in shared tools, pipelines, and datasets that outlast any single project. We are committed to open, replicable, and cumulative science, and to building resources that benefit the wider research community.