Philip N. Howard is a Professor at Oxford University, where he works as Director of the Oxford Internet Institute and is a Fellow of Balliol College. Howard investigates the impact of digital media on political life around the world, and he is a frequent commentator on global media and political... Read more
Philip N. Howard is a Professor at Oxford University, where he works as Director of the Oxford Internet Institute and is a Fellow of Balliol College.
Howard investigates the impact of digital media on political life around the world, and he is a frequent commentator on global media and political affairs. Howard’s research has demonstrated how new information technologies are used in both civic engagement and social control in countries around the world. His projects on digital activism, information access, and modern governance in both democracies and authoritarian regimes have been supported by public science agencies such as the European Research Council and National Science Foundation.
Philip Howard has published eight books and over 140 academic articles, book chapters, conference papers, and commentary essays on information technology, international affairs and public life. His peer reviewed publications examine the role of new information and communication technologies in politics and social development. He writes about information politics and international affairs, and he is the author of eight books, including The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010), Democracy’s Fourth Wave? Digital Media and the Arab Spring (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2012, with Muzammil Hussain), and most recently Pax Technica: How the Internet of Things May Set Us Free or Lock Us Up (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015). His research spans several disciplines, and he is among a small number of scholars who have won multiple “best book” awards from all three major academic associations for his work in political science, sociology, and communication.
Philip Howard has had senior teaching, research, and administrative appointments at universities around the world, including Columbia, Princeton, Stanford, and the University of Washington. From 2013-15 he helped design and launch a new School of Public Policy at Central European University in Budapest.
His research and commentary writing has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, and many international media outlets. Philip Howard was awarded the National Democratic Institute’s 2018 “Democracy Prize” and Foreign Policy magazine named him a “Global Thinker” for pioneering the social science of fake news production.