Topic
Sign in

People

Dean

Faculty

Fellowship Candidates

  • Anchit Som
    Anchit SomFellowship Candidate

    I'm Anchit Som. I currently work as a Product Manager in Access, Triage and Navigation at NHS England. In my role, I design and develop platform products that power the 111/999 triage service used by 56 million citizens. I'm also involved in defining the next generation of AI Triage experience to be made available on the NHS App.

    Before that I trained as a Service Designer at the Royal College of Art, where I founded a decarbonisation startup that was a finalist in King Charles’ Terra Carta Prize. I grew up in India and Hong Kong, and have worked in technology roles across public sector healthcare, travel, and finance. My work has been featured in various publications including the Harvard Business Review, Financial Times, Venture Beat, Wallpaper Magazine and BBC News. 

    Through my work, I have often probed the boundary between public and private, and what the state is actually for. Digital public infrastructure is the clearest modern version of the question. Some states build their own rails and run them as public goods, while others buy the equivalent and become tenants of it. Britain has done a mix of the two. I sit on that line most days at the NHS, where the answer lands in a radically different place from one service to the next, and it’s something I would love to explore as a general Political Technology problem at the fellowship. 

    The other thing I'm curious about is what it means to be a citizen in a digitally enabled world. Forty years of treating public services as products has taught all of us to behave like customers: to compare, to complain, to opt out, to turn to the market to fix it. Being a citizen asks for more than that and often offers far less help doing it. Finding out what your MP has actually done, as opposed to what they've said, takes hours most people don't have, so we take the media's account of it instead. I want to know whether lowering that cost of participation changes what people ask for, and how they take part.

    I like to build my knowledge in public policy through courses and books. Seeing like a State by James Scott has been particularly inspiring. I write about my observations on Substack, and I build little experiments, like an MP vote predictor, to test the thinking against something that actually runs. What I've been missing is a room of people to build alongside, and the prospect of a cohort and faculty to collaborate with is what excites me most about the year ahead.

  • Clara Yeo
    Clara YeoFellowship Candidate

    There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
    Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
    *— Shakespeare, Hamlet (Act 1, scene 5)

    My experience and interests can be summed up as law, governance and policy, and theatre. 

    I spent six years as a lawyer in a City firm, gaining experience in financial regulation, corporate governance, and environmental law. 

    My work for small charities has included campaign strategy, policy research design and fieldwork, and stakeholder outreach.

    I’ve attended over 1,000 theatre productions. I’m deeply curious about the technical aspects of what makes theatre tick, and I also appreciate the aesthetic and emotional experience that theatre elicits in audiences.

    I’m especially interested in immersive, interactive and/or participatory theatre, an interest which was sparked during the pandemic when virtual reality experiences and theatre on Zoom filled the void of live theatre.

    I evaluate independent theatre productions across London for a set of annual awards that recognise excellence in off-West End theatres. This has honed my analytical rigour and attention to detail in theatre criticism. Partly in recognition of theatremakers’ incredible dedication and hard work, my theatre reviews attempt to be balanced and constructive.

    I’ve dabbled in performance, stage management and tech as part of an acclaimed interactive theatre production in the West End which was attended by billionaires and at least one Nobel laureate / tech CEO.

    I recently participated in a ~50 participant multi-day simulation of the 1492 papal conclave. The simulation was originally designed by Ada Palmer to introduce Machiavelli’s The Prince as part of an Italian Renaissance history course.

    I’m intrigued by and/or curious about:

    • Theatre and games (including but not limited to tabletop games and video games) as ways to effect change;

    • Narratives and meaning-making;

    • The pedagogy of experiential learning;

    • The effect of culture on politics;

    • Enhancing the effectiveness of campaign / cause-led messaging;

    • Systems thinking, and other paradigms or frameworks;

    • Fostering interdisciplinary synergy and serendipity;

    • “Wicked problems”;

    • Community building.

    I’m looking forward to joining the vibrant and energising community at Newspeak House.

    —

    My Newspeak House-related projects: https://nh.clarayeo.org/

    My Newspeak House-related writing: http://moreclear.substack.com/

    I publish my theatre thoughts at: https://theatrethoughts.substack.com

  • Disha Shanbhag
    Disha ShanbhagFellowship Candidate

    Hi, I'm Disha Shanbhag. I'm a design and policy researcher working at the
    intersection of technology, design and public services in the UK, Europe and other
    international contexts. As a trained anthropologist with an MSc in Digital
    Anthropology from University College London, I believe in bringing a user-centred,
    relational and inclusive approach to public sector digital transformation across a
    range of sectors and themes.

    I currently work at PUBLIC, a digital transformation advisory firm focused on the
    public sector, where I lead procurement and innovation projects. Over the last two
    years I've delivered 15+ projects supporting UK central and local government
    departments, startups and private sector companies in navigating the complexities
    of selling to government. I hold certifications from the Chartered Institute of
    Procurement and Supply     (CIPS), and I'm currently developing a model for using
    procurement as a lever for AI governance in the UK.

    Beyond work, I write for Interweave, a GovTech newsletter covering Eurasian tech
    policy, startup ecosystems and procurement innovation. I'm increasingly interested
    in how existing inequalities shape the commercialisation and adoption of public
    sector technology in Global Majority contexts.

    The Newspeak House fellowship is a rare opportunity to expand my design research
    toolkit and develop my interest in public sector technology beyond the fairly niche
    corner I've worked in so far. I'm particularly excited about building a community of
    practitioners and translating my research into easy to use tools as a part of this
    fellowship.

    If any of this sounds interesting, feel free to reach out to me at
    [email protected] or on LinkedIn.

  • Fernanda Munhoz
    Fernanda MunhozFellowship Candidate

    I’m interested in the spaces between traditional sectors, the gaps and intersections where there’s an opportunity to build something that didn’t exist yet, or connect things that weren’t connected before. For the last ten years, that’s mostly been my job. Finding those gaps, building things and connecting the dots, in organisations of every size, from a team of two to the biggest employer in the country.

    Concretely, my career has included building the first digital directory of domestic abuse services in the UK; running an award-winning chatbot for women at risk of abuse in South Africa; helping hospitals digitise patient data in the NHS; campaigning in and out of the streets on women’s rights and justice with Amnesty International; and, more recently, helping build new infrastructure to fund social movements and incubate new charities across Europe and beyond.

    I have a BA in Politics and an MA in Human Rights, and that background shapes how I approach all of this. I believe in a human rights-based approach: that people have inherent rights and dignity simply because they are human, and that institutions and organisations have a responsibility to respect, protect and enable those rights. For me, that means building with people, not for them, challenging institutional assumptions, centring lived experience, and thinking about who has power, agency and ownership over the solutions we create. This is where politics and technology meet for me, and it’s a thread I will bring to my work and explorations at Newspeak House.

    Gender justice is the other constant running through my work. For over a decade, I’ve worked on issues from building feminist tech and advocating for women’s rights to supporting the strategy and governance of organisations working towards gender justice, including as a Board Member of the Latin American Women’s Rights Service. It’s the area I care most deeply about, and one I continue to explore.

    I’m coming to this fellowship because I’m curious. I want to connect with people who challenge my thinking, introduce me to new perspectives, and help me find the next gaps and opportunities. I’m hoping those connections will leave me inspired and with new ideas about where I can contribute.

  • Joel Naoki CHRISTOPH
    Joel Naoki CHRISTOPHFellowship Candidate

    I was born in the Netherlands to a French-Japanese family and grew up there and in Germany. Since then, I have moved on my own to eight more countries, bringing the total to ten I have lived in for a year or more. I speak eight languages. That sounds like a party trick until you are the person in the meeting who can read the English and the Chinese versions of the same agreement and see that they do not say the same thing.

    I am an economist. My subject is how to govern powerful technologies when no single government controls them. Artificial intelligence and nuclear weapons take up most of my time. When states or firms agree to limit something dangerous, what makes the limit stick? I look at how you check that a promise is being kept: measuring the computing power behind advanced AI systems, weapons inspections under arms control treaties, the economics of why some agreements hold up while others get ignored.

    I studied at University College London and the Barcelona School of Economics, spent a year at Tsinghua University in Beijing reading politics and international relations, then did several years of doctoral research in Florence. Since then I have been a Summer Fellow at the Centre for the Governance of AI in London, a Technology and Human Rights Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, and a fellow at the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia in Jakarta, where I looked at how Southeast Asian governments might treat AI as a shared regional resource. I have written for Lawfare, Tech Policy Press and the World Economic Forum.

    I build organisations too. I founded 10Billion.org, an open-source movement of around 300 people across 30 countries, with local groups in Berlin, Jakarta and Manila. I ran Effective Thesis, a nonprofit that helps students choose research questions that matter.

    My nuclear work runs through Pugwash, where I help run the International Student Young Pugwash leadership team. I am a Nuclear Futures Fellow with Ploughshares Fund and Horizon 2045, and in 2026 I received the Gorbachev/Shultz Youth Award from Voices for a World Free of Nuclear Weapons.

    I spend my working life designing rules that are supposed to survive people who would rather they did not, almost always on paper, almost never anywhere I can watch them fail. A house of fifteen people with a treasury, a guest room and a doorbell is the smallest version of that problem I have found, and the only one where I get to see the whole thing at once.

    [email protected] · 10billion.substack.com · linkedin.com/in/joelchristoph

  • MK
    Madison KarasFellowship Candidate

    I work in spaces that bring together independent media and journalism, research and technology. Currently, I'm focused on how service design, cooperative models, and more robust contribution systems can benefit everyone in an information system, from producers to consumers.

  • Mario Morvan
    Mario MorvanFellowship Candidate

    I am a researcher and technologist working towards a better-informed society. My background spans academia, public service, and the co-operative and charity sectors, across applied research, software engineering, science outreach, and community tech initiatives. While my past work focused on AI applications in astronomy and healthcare, my current research interests lie in digital libraries and commons, computer-supported cooperative work, and collaborative knowledge graphs.

    A Wikimedian since 2022, I am fascinated by the successes and limitations of Wikipedia and peer production more generally. I am exploring the potential of collective modelling to shape more effective and equitable systems for producing knowledge and informing decisions. In particular, I am passionate about building better tooling for collective claim-checking, impact assessment, ideation and value alignment. I value collaboration towards shared goals, so if these problems interest you too, please get in touch.

    Beyond reliable information, shouldn't everyone also have access to — and a say in — quality housing, food, healthcare and education? I have been active in the UK and French housing co-operative movements, and in the popular education charity Réseau Salariat, developing ideas and experiments such as Food social security and the Wage for life. There is much to learn from these living examples of strengthened collectives and public services, and I am eager to push these guiding questions further as current digital and economic transformations make them ever more relevant.

    Everyone should have access to lifelong, quality education and training in a changing world, and to community spaces for collective learning and building. Taking part in this programme is a way for me to continue (un)learning, to (net)work towards (dis)solving problems unconventionally, and to challenge and refine my understanding of the sociotechnical landscape in order to better contribute to it. It is also about collective development: envisioning and experimenting together with building blocks for our futures.

    website | github | orcid

  • Nathaniel Cooke
    Nathaniel CookeFellowship Candidate

    [full bio coming soon]

    Senior Policy Adviser (National Security & Resilience) @ Government Office for Science | Existential & Global Catastrophic Risk

    I do things that (try to) reduce the odds of world-changing (or world-ending) catastrophes, from pandemics and nuclear war to ecological breakdown and AI-powered totalitarianism.

    These mostly focus on the ways our social, political, and economic systems put us at risk: fragile international networks, short-termist political systems, destructive concentrations of power, and more.

    There's plenty of work to be done; let me know if you're interested!

    Also a big fan of martial arts, science fiction, folk music, and books.

    linkedin.com/in/nathanielcooke/

  • Niba
    NibaFellowship Candidate

    I’m Niba Audrey (@NotesByNiba), a science communicator, video host, filmmaker, and former research scientist. Most of my work is driven by a simple idea: when complex information is made genuinely accessible, without losing the excitement that makes people want to understand it, people are better equipped to make decisions that actually make sense for them.

    I spent seven years as a plant developmental geneticist, studying how living things grow, respond, and organize themselves. That background still shapes the kinds of questions I’m drawn to. I’m fascinated by intelligence and communication, whether the subject is a plant, an octopus, a human being, or an artificial system.

    More recently, my research and civic interests have increasingly focused on AI safety, public understanding of AI, cognition, consciousness, and technology governance. A lot of the most important conversations about AI move quickly and assume a level of technical knowledge that most people have never had a reason to develop. I’m interested in making those ideas easier to understand without flattening their complexity. For me, accessibility is not about telling people what to think. It is about giving people enough context to understand what is at stake, then trusting them to think for themselves and make informed choices about technologies that are already beginning to shape their lives.

    Through my work with the Buddhism and AI Initiative, I’ve also been exploring what Buddhist philosophy and contemplative traditions can contribute to questions about what intelligence and consciousness are, and what it might mean to build technology with human flourishing in mind.

    Science communication is the through line in all of this. I host for SciShow and KQED’s Big Ideas, and I’ve hosted and produced science stories for PBS, Seeker, Stanford, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Live Science, a science news journalism outlet. My PBS series Hungry Planet explores the science and culture of food around the world, and my work across digital and broadcast media has reached millions of viewers.

    I’ve been an AAAS Mass Media Fellow and a Jackson Wild Film Fellow. I was also a Science Communication Resident at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing, and both a Fellow and later a Resident at the STEM Advocacy Institute.

    What draws me to Newspeak House is the chance to become more thoughtful and effective at translating difficult, consequential ideas into forms that people can actually use. AI is moving quickly, and public understanding needs to keep pace. I want to deepen my own understanding while becoming better at helping others engage with these technologies in ways that feel informed, empowering, and grounded in their own values.

    You can find my work at www.notesbyniba.com and @NotesByNiba across every major social media platform.

  • Noam Herberg
    Noam HerbergFellowship Candidate

    I’m a political organiser and political technologist interested in how technology, research and strong communities can make democratic politics work better and, ultimately, help progressive movements win change.

    I’m currently Community and Partnerships Officer at Campaign Lab, a non-profit bringing together campaigners, researchers and technologists to experiment with new approaches to political campaigning. My work spans community building, partnerships, technology and applied research, and I’ve helped develop projects exploring AI, social listening, political persuasion, digital organising and new tools for MPs and campaigners. I’m particularly interested in the gap between academic or technological innovation and what actually works in the messy reality of political organising: how we can test ideas rigorously, turn useful experiments into practical tools, and make sophisticated technology accessible to people without technical backgrounds.

    Alongside my professional work, I’m Chair of Finchley and Golders Green Labour Party. I worked on the 2024 general election campaign and stood for Barnet Council in 2026. I’m also a trustee of a local food bank. I’m rooted in the practical work of campaigning, from knocking on doors to organising volunteers, but I’m equally interested in drawing a line from that experience to bigger questions about institutions, technology, political strategy and how people participate in democracy.

    Before moving into politics, I studied philosophy, with a particular interest in Wittgenstein, completing my MA at UCL. I’m fascinated by political behaviour, institutions and collective action, as well as broader questions about how technological change alters power, and our ability to act together. More recently, I completed the UCL Policy Lab Fellowship for Emerging Leaders alongside people working across politics and social change ecosystem.

    I’m excited about this programme because I want to get better at understanding and driving political change. I’d like to learn from people approaching civic and political problems from very different directions, develop my own thinking through collaboration and criticism, and bring back ideas that can be tested in real campaigns and communities. I also want to think seriously about the effects of technology particularly AI on our politics and attempt to understand and participate in the systems and technology that will bring radical change to political action.  

    Email: [email protected]
    Work Email: [email protected]
    Phone: 07534421068

  • Rhianwen Rowlands
    Rhianwen RowlandsFellowship Candidate

    I'm Rhianwen (Rhi) Rowlands a communications professional, musician and researcher based in Stoke Newington. 

    I have an interest in propaganda, hauntology, liberation politics and how software can be used to demystify complex topics. I currently work as a communications specialist in a third sector organisation focused on making the textile industry more sustainable. Much of my job is making complicated research legible to non-specialists. 

    From my perspective, one of the key challenges for the Left ™ in this moment, is accurately combatting mis/dis-information. I’m interested in using software to develop counter-messaging/methods using accurate material and socio-cultural analysis. I think that part of this involves actively developing the ability to stretch our imaginations and what we conceive of as politically possible.

    I am currently building two software projects. The first, called fr narratives, tracks narratives and messaging across far-right telegram networks. I want to understand what messaging is pushed and how it spreads; whether it is coordinated or catches on organically. The data so far shows these networks splitting into sub-communities where channels play the same role in sharing and framing news stories/events as they happen. 

    The second is a data-centre transparency tool intended to help inform ongoing public discussion and sharpen critique of infrastructure development not benefitting the public. There is currently no requirement in the UK for companies to report data centre cooling or building methods in any standardised way. What does exist is scattered across planning applications, company accounts and paywalled commercial databases. My aim is to assemble that material into a single open dataset, highlight what is missing and why, and provide an accessible map of locations around the UK with information on the differences between these sites and the purposes they serve.

    I also have a musical project, Sharks on Vinyl, and am currently interested in developing a set that incorporates live coding elements. I co-founded PlugJam, an electronic-music open mic night in Cardiff that's still ongoing. PlugJam gave me a lot of experience organising events and building a community. Live events inevitably face challenges, logistically and technically, and it was a crash course in problem solving under pressure and getting things back on track.  

    I'm excited about joining Newspeak House to learn from people who are building projects and thinking about novel approaches and ways of thinking. I’m looking forward to being in a room with people building civic tech and trying to make a positive impact.

  • Tess Buckley
    Tess BuckleyFellowship Candidate

    I'm a digital ethicist and musician working at the intersection of memory (individual & collective), movement (public protest & friction) and music (jazz & celtic), building systems and facilitating experiences that help people reimagine collective futures and relationships to each other.

    ‘Key’ words that would get a conversation going include: embodiment, friction, identity, memory, agency…

    My research and civic interests span a few threads I keep returning to: AI assurance and ethics in practice, the human infrastructure needed for responsible innovation, disability and design (particularly how facial recognition, hiring tools, and training datasets fail people with facial differences), and (closest to my heart right now) responsible technology in music. I've published on operationalising ethical principles in AI music generation and written on ableism in biotechnologies, harmful media tropes, and the philosophical frameworks used to "fix" disability. In 2021 I co-led Community Credits, an artivism project on making curb cuts visible as public art, honouring the disabled communities who fought for infrastructure everyone now benefits from. I am currently writing & excited about: “Embodied vocality, facial difference, and the ethics of voice technologies” - an autoethnography on performing with facial paralysis and chronic pain, and what that teaches about voice tech, authenticity, and flattening.

    Academically, I hold a MA in AI and Philosophy from Northeastern (valedictorian, specialised in ableism in biotechnologies) and a BA from McGill (International Development x Philosophy x Communications, specialised in ownership and authorship in multiplayer models). Professionally, I started out in event production and convening by co-founding École Publique, an experimental creative collective in Montreal running accessible, political-minded events, and hosting two radio shows on CKUT 90.3FM as well as supporting an alternative radio platform project. After my postgrad, I worked as an AI Ethics Senior Analyst on a dataset on corporate digital responsibility that was paid for by investors that wanted to understand portfolio risks before placing capital, I then supported a specialised model for sustainability disclosure. I'm currently Senior Programme Manager in Digital Ethics and AI Safety at techUK, working across UK government, regulators, civic society and 1,000+ tech companies to make ethical principles operational through assurance and standards. Alongside this I sit on the board of HiQuu, a patent-pending multisensory performance infrastructure, and have joined BRAID UK’s Stakeholder Forum. In 2024, I thoroughly enjoyed curating a public three day symposium on AI x Music at Conway Hall for the Bloomsbury Festival with permanent and programmed activities. I'm also a released musician (an EP and three singles out, with a second EP landing fall 2026) and I still take on the odd crochet commission as "@sslow_fashionn" (I love heritage craft & analogue skills & boats).

    Right now, mid-way through a summer residency at Stochastic Labs in Berkley, California, I'm working at the intersection of music and memory, some projects include: a hand-sewn textile "book" encoding words with diodes, microcontollers and conductive thread in Baudot code, an immersive hanging installation of strands that ‘sing’ when approached, touched and tangled, a sensor-rebuilt version of my Nana's bodhrán frame drum, and a live "sing-back" chamber that makes collective remembering and process audible. Alongside a collective playlist tool for recalling personal stories inside shared songs, a community workshop that teaches attendees about offline small language models through textile craft, and a pair of crocheted, connection-triggered garments built for contact improvisation which pose the question: what does intimacy/touch sound like? Across all of it, the throughline is the same: identity and memory aren't things we hold alone, they're made through friction, touch, and connection with other people, and worth deliberately rebuilding as shared, participatory experience.

    I'm genuinely excited to weave these threads together and expand my practice with the Newspeak House cohort this year. My focus is on grassroots movements, and aiming to breathe more life into a long-form essay nine months in the making: "The Public Reimagining for AI Justice: Strategic Lessons in Empowering and Organising to Overcome Centralised Power from Past Civil Rights Movements." The chance to sit inside a community so deliberately built around tech, politics, and public life and to keep asking strange, sincere questions alongside people doing the same feels like exactly the kind of friction I am looking for and quite frankly makes good work possible. 

    Cheers to liminal and entangled becomings >

    tesssbuckley @ gmail.com | website | linkedin

  • William Wong
    William WongFellowship Candidate

    I'm a computational artist working in narrative-driven games and interactive storytelling, based between London and Hong Kong.

    I work in a loop. An observation becomes an experiment, the experiment becomes an artwork, and the setup gets published so anyone can run their own version. The repository matters as much as the piece — someone should be able to take the apparatus, get a different result, and say so.

    For years I pointed that loop inward, at self-exploration and personal reflection. More recently I've been working with data and public records, and finding stories already there — already being lived by many people at once — rather than ones I had to invent. I'm moving from computational artist toward digital storyteller: working with the record rather than the imagination.

    I run Into Storymode, an initiative showing how people can use technology to tell their own stories and be understood by others. Within it I organise Playable Stories, a series where independent game designers open up their creative process in public. Organising has taught me more about how groups work than any of the building has.

    Games are what drew me to this in the first place. They're a medium for systems rather than events — a rule you have to operate under lands differently from a rule described to you — which makes game design a way of showing how machinery works, not just what it does to people. I'm also interested in AI as an interface onto real records rather than a generator of plausible ones: the same models used to make evidence navigable instead of to fabricate it.

    At Newspeak House I want to work on the expensive half of civic life. Broadcasting and coordinating are nearly free now. Deliberating, compromising, and understanding people who don't share your view are not, and no tool has helped much with those yet. I expect to spend the year running experiments where the point is what we learn rather than how efficiently things run — and publishing the setups, so others can run them too.

    Email: [email protected]
    Web: intostorymode.com
    LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/william-wong-37854577
    GitHub: github.com/IntoStorymode and github.com/PlayableStories

  • Yiannis Ravanis
    Yiannis RavanisFellowship Candidate

    I'm an engineer and creative technologist with a background in Electronics & Electrical Engineering. I began my career in R&D for autonomous vessels, where I was design authority for perception on a world-first GPS-denied autonomous docking system, building bespoke robotic perception systems with LIDAR, infrared cameras, and applied ML, while also working as an agile coach leading continuous delivery and organisational culture change.

    I build systems and I bring people together. I've run hackathons and collaborative painting workshops. I like making containers where other people can do their best work. I figure things out by building, testing, and iterating: scrappy, empirical, fast.

    For the past year I've been building ideologos.com, a "Socratic AI" that helps people form their own opinions rather than telling them what to think. Ideologos acts as an ideological midwife, helping you discover the "unknown knowns" that comprise your ideology.

    I want to understand governance paradigms, what each is good at, why it emerges, why it fails. I want to experiment with what comes after representational party based democracy. Our votes can now cary meaning. Can these new technologies change how we practice group decision-making?

    I'm interested in exploring democratic AI governance as one of the few real levers on the metacrisis and the climate crisis underneath it. AI governance in both directions: governing AI democratically, and using AI to help communities govern themselves.

    I don't think this is obviously solvable, but if we can learn to govern a small community well, maybe it fractalises.

    I'm drawn to Newspeak House because it's one of the few places that treats this as a craft to practise and experiment with, not a topic to theorise.