Hello! I am a lecturer, researcher, and photographer. I teach the practice of computational social science and the fairness and power imbalance of machine learning systems at the Oxford Internet Institute. With training in mathematics, computational science, and information architecture, I study the governance of algorithmic societies and the regulation of technologies built on human data. My research develops statistical models to make sense of these complex systems, adversarial machine learning approaches to highlight weaknesses of deployed technologies, and interactive visualisations to engage with academic findings.

My primary area of expertise is data privacy, privacy-enhancing technologies, and anonymity. My work demonstrated the limits of traditional techniques to de-identify and widely share ‘anonymous’ data online, suggesting action for better privacy-preserving frameworks for researchers to collect and analyse sensitive personal data.

Openings and collaborations: I welcome new collaborations to model and anticipate how AI and algorithms will shape academic research, access to information on digital platforms, and social justice. I also welcome projects with a critical angle analysing the use of digital technology for social good, to study discourse on international migration, climate action and communication, and foster participatory civic science. If you are interested in joining me at the Oxford Internet Institute, please see my Openings page.

I received my PhD from the Université catholique de Louvain in 2019 and worked as a researcher at the Data Science Institute and Computational Privacy Group of Imperial College London, at the ENS de Lyon, and at the MIT Media Lab. My work has been published in peer-reviewed journals and conferences (Nature Communications, Nature Scientific Data, Usenix Security, JMLR, WWW) and is regularly covered in the press (New York Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Forbes, El Pais, Scientific American) as well as featured in BBC World Service, France TV, RTBF TV and Radio, Radio Canada. I lead the Observatory of Anonymity, an international interactive website in 89 countries where visitors can find out what makes them more vulnerable to re-identification and where researchers can test the anonymity of their research data.

You can contact me by email at X@Y where X=luc.rocher and Y=oii.ox.ac.uk. Follow me on Mastodon (@cynddl@mamot.fr) and Twitter (@cynddl) for occasional research updates.

Pronouns: they/them.