Profile
The Path to Power Project, led by digital technology and politics experts, studies global trends in democracy, populism, and misinformation. The team’s diverse regional expertise informs collaborative research, translating insights into actionable policy recommendations to strengthen democracy in the digital age.
Biography
Ewan is a PhD student and researcher within the Digital Governance, Technology and Policy chair at the Hasso Plattner Institute. His PhD research interest lies in understanding the role of international cooperation and regional organisations in influencing digital policy decisions in Eurasia, for which mixed quantitative and qualitative methods will be applied to large data sets to describe patterns of policy convergence. Alongside this project, Ewan also supports the research of the ‘The Path to Power’ Project led by Prof. Gillian Bolsover within the HPI’s Digital Governance, Technology and Policy chair. His interest in questions of political power, international influence, and digital technology developed through previous work as a researcher in the DGO funded SCRIPTS cluster project: “War in Ukraine, Russia’s potential decoupling from the global internet and the changing perspective of emerging powers on internet and data governance” at the Freie Universität in Berlin. Outside of academia, Ewan has a passion for travelling and language learning, and can speak German, Russian and Czech alongside his native English.
Research Focus
His research falls within the field of comparative politics, with a specialisation in digital governance in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The focus of his PhD thesis lies in the modes of cooperation between polities, as institutionalised through regional organisations, for the transfer of digital policy. Methodologically this research will employ natural language processing as well as qualitative case study analysis to describe patterns of policy clustering between regimes within this region.
Education
- (exp. 2027) Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) – Digital Governance, Technology and Policy
- Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam, Potsdam
- Master of the Arts (M.A.) – East European Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin. 2021 – 2024
- Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) – German and Russian, University of Bristol, Bristol. 2016 – 2020
Projects
- Research on the EU Election in Germany 2024 and the Georgian Parliamentary Election.
Experience
- Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Research Assistant. Apr 2022 – March 2024
- Third Bridge Group Ltd., London, Associate – European Consulting. Feb 2021 – Jul 2021
- TransPerfect, Prague, German Language Data Analyst. Jun 2020 – Dec 2020
- University of Bristol, Bristol, Research Intern. May 2018 – Aug 2018