Oxford Policy Hackathon

Ari Bersch is currently an MPhil Candidate in Comparative Government at University College. His research interests include voting behavior, political communication, political parties, the impact of artificial intelligence on politics, and the role of public opinion in shaping foreign policy. Before arriving at Oxford, Ari graduated summa cum laude from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, USA, with a BA in Government and Mathematics. His Government honors thesis, 'When Populists Come to Power: A US-UK Comparative Analysis,' explored how right-wing populist leaders changed their rhetorical styles and policy approaches once coming to office and when running for re-election—and how voters in the two countries responded to those changes. For this project, Ari won the Philo Sherman Bennett Prize for the best departmental honors thesis. He has also conducted research into US public opinion on Social Security reform and cultural preferences and biases across different artificial intelligence models, presenting this work at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Midwest Political Science Association Conference, and the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Teacher Education.

Sudha is currently a Master's student in Cognitive Science at the École Normale Supérieure, Paris. Her research interests lie in political and cultural cognition, particularly the cultural foundations of populist and exclusionary politics, religious political mobilisation, and migration governance systems. Previously, she graduated from the London School of Economics with a First Class Honours Degree in Psychological and Behavioural Science, and spent a year abroad at the Stockholm School of Economics, where she conducted a cross-cultural comparative study of anti-elitism and right-wing populist support across Western and Eastern regimes. She later extended her CIVICA research into her undergraduate dissertation, where she constructed novel migration governance typologies that analysed symbolic and structural integration in the EU. Sudha was also a Laidlaw Leadership and Research Scholar, where she co-authored a paper on the EU AI Act and conducted fieldwork interviewing EU policymakers and regulators. She was a Lab Manager for the Muthukrishna Lab at LSE, and co-founded Irrationale, LSE's first undergraduate research journal in the psychological sciences.

Xuelong graduated from the University of Cambridge with a MPhil in Technology Policy. His background is deeply interdisciplinary, holding three bachelor's degrees in political science, business administration, and AI. Xuelong is a co-founder of the Data for Public Impact Network (DPIN), which aims to empower students, researchers, and young professionals of diverse backgrounds to tackle pressing societal challenges using evidence-based policymaking and innovative techniques. Through DPIN, he has founded and run policy hackathons in Amsterdam and Cambridge, while coordinating more in Oxford, The Hague, and beyond. He has contributed to various initiatives, like by editing for the MIT Science Policy Review, organising talks for the Cambridge University Science Policy Exchange, and evaluating Amsterdam tech startups for ASIF Ventures. He has also conducted research on sociotechnical AI and now also runs a consultancy that implements AI systems for Dutch SMEs. He conducted computational research on disinformation around elections in Romania and Czechia at OCPSG, before becoming co-director of the organisation. He is passionate about working at the intersection of technology, society, and entrepreneurship, with a focus on making a social impact.