Oliver Hauser is a researcher, educator, consultant, speaker and non-executive director with expertise in economics, leadership and artificial intelligence (AI).

Professor Hauser is both an academic and practitioner with roles in the private, public and third sectors: He is Professor of Economics and Deputy Director at the Institute for Data Science & Artificial Intelligence at the University of Exeter, Faculty Affiliate at Harvard University, Senior Specialist Advisor in the Evaluation Task Force in the UK Cabinet Office, and an advisor to several multinational firms, start-ups and charities.

Welcome to my website!

I am Professor of Economics at the University of Exeter, where I am also Deputy Director (and formerly interim Co-Director) of the Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence and Faculty Affiliate at the Centre for Leadership. In addition, I am a Faculty Affiliate at the Harvard University Sustainability, Transparency and Accountability Research Initiative, and a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow leading the ambitious £1.4m BIG IDEAs project. I am associated with MIT’s J-PAL Initiative and the University of Vienna’s Center for Experimental Economics.

In government, I am Senior Specialist Advisor in the Evaluation Task Force in the Cabinet Office. I serve as a member on the Evaluation and Trial Advice Panel and on the Steering Committee for the AI Upskilling Fund at the Department of Science, Innovation & Technology.

In the corporate sector, I am Academic Advisor to MoreThanNow, a behavioural science consultancy; academic associate of the Behavioural Insights Team, the original “nudge unit”; and an advisory board member of MeVitae. I have advised and consulted for Fortune 500, FTSE 100 and other listed companies on leadership, organisational change and AI.

In the charitable sector, I currently serve as Vice-Chair of the BBC Children in Need’s South West Advisory Committee, helping to fund charities across the UK South West region, and as a trustee of Beacon Collaborative, a charity dedicated to growing the UK philanthropy sector.

Background and scientific achievements:

Previously, I held academic posts at Harvard Business School, Harvard Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Extension School. I have held prestigious fellowships at Harvard University, the Alan Turing Institute and the Behavioural Insights Team. I earned my Ph.D. in Biology from Harvard University and my B.Sc. in Physics from the University of Innsbruck.

My research has been published in top academic journals, including Nature, Quarterly Journal of Economics, PNAS, Nature Human Behaviour, Nature Communications, Science Advances, The Leadership Quarterly, and Behavioural Public Policy. I have received research funding of over £3.1m from major national and international grant bodies. If you want to find out more about my research, click here and for a list of my academic publications, click here.

I have also published popular articles for senior leaders and managers in the Harvard Business Review and Exeter Expertise. My research has also drawn attention from news outlets such as the Forbes, Bloomberg, Huffington Post, Vox, Slate, Yahoo, The Conversation, and VICE. For my managerial writing, click here.

I have been named one of the world’s best “40 Under 40” MBA professors (Poets & Quants) and previously one of the top “30 Under 30” thinkers (Pacific Standard). I also have received several awards for my teaching and research, including the Wharton People Analytics Research Prize, the Harvard University Richard J. Herrnstein Dissertation Prize, the Harvard John Parker Award, the Euregio Young Researcher Award, and several Certificates of Distinction in Teaching.

Interviews

For a general conversation about my research and teaching philosophy, please see my interview in Poets & Quants. If you are interested to find out more about my interest in behavioural science and AI in an interview with Money on the Mind and climate justice in an interview with Springer Nature.