Jamie Hancock

Thesis title: The Networked Border: Investigating the Global Impacts of Interconnected NLP-Powered Border Infrastructures

Biography

Background

Jamie Hancock is PhD candidate in Designing Natural Language Processing. They are a social scientist at the intersection of sociology, Science and Technology Studies, and law. Their work uses mixed-methods to explore how contemporary socio-political dynamics are entangled with LLMs and other data-driven technologies. Jamie’s interests include how sociotechnical developments affect power, accountability, access to justice, democratic functioning, and inequality. Their research has been covered in The Guardian, The Times, and Politico and has been cited by the UK Parliament.

Prior to the PhD, Jamie received an MA in Human, Social and Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge in 2021, where they conducted an Anthropology dissertation exploring how social media shapes autistic adults’ experiences of (self-)diagnosis. They completed an MSc in Political Sociology from LSE in 2022, with a dissertation on the politics of Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT)-based human rights investigations.

Between 2022 and 204, they worked as a Research Assistant for the Alan Turing Institute, where they published papers on subjects such as the human rights impacts of data sharing. From 2024-26, they worked for Demos as a Researcher and Senior Researcher in digital policy. As a volunteer, they have conducted investigative research for NGOs including Amnesty International and Statewatch.

 
 
 
 

Qualifications

MSc Political Sociology - the London School of Economics - 2022

MA Human, Social and Political Sciences - Peterhouse, University of Cambridge - 2021

 

 

 

 

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Research summary

Migration technology, human rights, critical data studies, surveillance studies, sociology of technology, democratic functioning

 

 

 

 

Current research interests

Jamie’s PhD research examines the implications of NLP and AI for accountability, governance and human rights, via a study of how these are being integrated into transnational border surveillance infrastructures. States seek to gather, analyse, and exchange data on travellers – such as Passenger Name Records and health records. The last decade has seen growing interest in the possibility of using AI tools such as LLMs for migration control. States, intergovernmental organisations, and private companies are exploring how they can integrate AI capabilities into existing border management systems, such as the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism’s GoTravel. These systems increasingly shape the possibilities of human movement on a global scale. Jamie’s research critically examines the social, governance and human rights implications of these technical developments. It combines digital methods, NLP for public records research, and ethnography. The research involves engagement with system designers, migrant rights advocates, and communities affected by border surveillance.

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