Intellectual historian and technologist working between Harvard and the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and a contributing editor at The Hedgehog Review. Chairman of FilterLabs, whose Ubiquity platform delivers verified, hyperlocal data intelligence in some of the world’s hardest information environments.
I work at a point where two traditions rarely meet: the history of ideas — how people and institutions have formed their beliefs, characters, and loyalties over time — and the technology now built to model, predict, and shape belief and behavior in real time.
I trained as an economist before turning to intellectual history — a PhD from Cambridge, a master’s from Yale, research fellowships at the Sorbonne and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. My scholarship has ranged across the history of philosophy, theology, and cultural sociology, including two books from Oxford University Press and a co-edited handbook on the history of theological reception. As a contributing editor at The Hedgehog Review, I write more often now on the questions that history keeps raising for the present: institutional decay and managerialism, the politics of memory, the state of higher education, and what AI is doing to belief, trust, and attention.
In 2022, I co-founded FilterLabs, applying a version of the same question — how people come to trust what they believe — to the mechanics of data and AI. FilterLabs’ Ubiquity platform gives analysts and decision-makers source-verified, hyperlocal signal in noisy information environments, from conflict zones to humanitarian response. I led the company as CEO through its first years and now serve as Chairman, working alongside CEO Erol Yayboke.
Today I split my time between Harvard, where I co-direct the AI and Flourishing Initiative at the Human Flourishing Program, and FilterLabs.org, the non-profit we spun out of FilterLabs to bring the technology to independent journalists, academics, and other civic actors in the pro-democracy space.
Contributing editor. Recent essays on managerialism, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, antisemitism and memory, the state of higher education, and AI chatbots.
Full list of essaysHarvard Human Flourishing Program, co-led with Keyun Ruan (Risk Economics, Alphabet/Google). Research on building and evaluating AI systems in service of human flourishing rather than engagement or attention.
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Writing a book on Adolf von Harnack and how this largely forgotten theologian shaped how universities build and fund major research projects.
Co-founded in 2022. FilterLabs’ flagship platform, Ubiquity, delivers source-verified, hyperlocal data intelligence for defense, government, and humanitarian organizations working in fragmented or contested information environments.
Used by partners including the Development Intelligence Lab to track fast-moving political and social dynamics — from Nepal to active conflict zones — where reliable, local-level signal is hardest to get and matters most.
At the University of Virginia, led a team of data scientists and scholars building machine learning tools to anticipate political and social violence — the direct precursor to FilterLabs.
Research and commentary featured in, and interviews given to: