UKRI Policy Fellowship DCMS Future of Online Regulation UKRI Policy Fellowship

A UKRI Policy Fellow will embed directly inside the UK government’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) for up to 18 months to produce analysis that shapes how the country regulates online platforms. This matters because the UK is rewriting the rulebook for the internet—covering everything from social media safety to digital competition—but policymakers often lack direct, sustained access to academic expertise. The fellowship bridges that gap. Instead of reading a report from outside, the Fellow works inside the department, co-designing projects with civil servants and feeding research directly into decisions on online regulation. If the fellowship succeeds, it could make future regulations more evidence-based and responsive to real-world harms, without the usual lag between academic findings and government action. The impact is not on a single product or system but on the machinery of policy itself: how the government thinks about online harms, platform accountability, and digital markets. This is applied social science, not fundamental research—its value is measured in better-informed regulation, not in a new technology or discovery.