Dame Wendy Hall DBE, FRS, FREng

Dame Wendy Hall is a pioneering computer scientist, global policy adviser and academic. An authority on artificial intelligence, digital geopolitics and global technology governance, she works in the fields of AI, data and the internet, and how these areas influence competition, governance and politics. Wendy has worked with governments, boards and institutions around the world, helping them to understand how new technologies are reshaping geopolitics, economics and democracy.

Regius Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Web Science Institute at the University of Southampton, Wendy is a founder of the field of Web Science, the interdisciplinary study of the internet and AI, their place in society, and how systems are shaped as much by politics, power and human behaviour as by code. Her early work on the nascent concepts that would go on to build the World Wide Web has helped define how we understand the evolution of digital infrastructure and its impact on society.

In the policy world, Wendy was appointed to the UN High-Level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence, contributing directly to international efforts to coordinate AI standards and governance. She co-Chaired the UK Government’s AI Review, was Chair of the Ada Lovelace Institute, and served as the UK’s first AI Skills Champion. She is an adviser to governments and companies worldwide on AI strategy, digital sovereignty and regulatory design.

Wendy is also the co-author of Four Internets, an analysis of how competing political systems are fragmenting the online world and redefining digital sovereignty. The book argues that the global internet is shaped by rival value systems, both political and economic. Centred around Silicon Valley, Brussels, Washington and Beijing, the systems each embed different notions of freedom, security, innovation and control into the companies and technologies they influence.

Within science and engineering, Wendy has served as Senior Vice President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, President of the British Computer Society, and as a member of the UK Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology. She is also co-Chair of the ACM Publications Board and Editor-in-Chief of Royal Society Open Science journal.

Wendy explores the geopolitics of technology, the realities of AI adoption beyond the hype, the evolution of global AI regulation, and the long-term implications for democracy and human agency. She is a scientist who understands power, behaviour and influence, a policy architect who understands technology, and a global adviser who understands what is at stake.