I'm a PhD candidate in Social Data Science at the University of Oxford. My doctoral research evaluates the capabilities of artificial intelligence systems to influence human attitudes, behavior, and cognition. Alongside my PhD, I work as a research scientist at the UK AI Security Institute.

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Selected research. For a full list of publications see here.

2025

Hackenburg, K., Tappin, B. M., Hewitt, L., Saunders, E., Black, S., Lin, H., Fist, C., Margetts, H., Rand, D.G., & Summerfield, C. (2025). The Levers of Political Persuasion with Conversational AI. Science.
[Article] [Data + Code]

Luettgau, L., Kirk, H. R., Hackenburg, K., Bergs, J., Davidson, H., Ogden, H., Siddarth, D., Huang, S., & Summerfield, C. (2025). Conversational AI increases political knowledge as effectively as self-directed internet search. Preprint.
[Preprint]

Summerfield, C., Luettgau, L., Dubois, M., Kirk, H. R., Hackenburg, K., Fist, C., Slama, K., et al. (2025). Lessons from a Chimp: AI "Scheming" and the Quest for Ape Language. Preprint.
[Preprint]

Summerfield, C., Argyle, L., Bakker, M., Collins, T., Durmus, E., Eloundou, T., Gabriel, I., Hackenburg, K., et al. (2025). How will advanced AI systems impact democracy? Preprint.
[Preprint]

Röttger, P., Hinck, M., Hofmann, V., Hackenburg, K., Pyatkin, V., Brahman, F., & Hovy, D. (2025). IssueBench: Millions of realistic prompts for measuring issue bias in LLM writing assistance. Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics.
[Article]

Hackenburg, K., Tappin, B.M., Röttger, P., Hale, S., Bright, J., & Margetts, H. (2025). Scaling language model size yields diminishing returns for single-message political persuasion. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(10), e2413443122.
[Article] [PDF] [Data + Code]

Hackenburg, K., Ibrahim, L., Tappin, B. M., & Tsakiris, M. (2025). Comparing the persuasiveness of role-playing large language models and human experts on polarized US political issues. AI & Society, 1–11.
[Article] [Data + Code]

Williams, A. R., Burke-Moore, L., Chan, R. S. Y., Enock, F. E., Nanni, F., Sippy, T., Chung, Y.-L., Gabasova, E., Hackenburg, K., & Bright, J. (2025). Large language models can consistently generate high-quality content for election disinformation operations. PLOS ONE, 20(3), e0317421.
[Article]

Von Mohr, M., Hackenburg, K., Tanzer, M., Fotopoulou, A., Campbell, C., & Tsakiris, M. (2025). A leader I can (not) trust: understanding the path from epistemic trust to political leader choices via dogmatism. Politics and the Life Sciences, 44(1), 88–107.
[Article]

2024

Hackenburg, K. & Margetts, H. (2024). Evaluating the persuasive influence of political microtargeting with large language models. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(24), e2403116121.
[Article] [PDF] [Data + Code]

Hackenburg, K. & Margetts, H. (2024). Reply to Teeny and Matz: Toward the robust measurement of personalized persuasion with generative AI. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(43), e2418817121.
[Article]

Pretus, C., Javeed, A., Hughes, D., Hackenburg, K., Tsakiris, M., Vilarroya, O., & Van Bavel, J. (2024). The misleading count: An identity-based intervention to counter partisan misinformation sharing. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 379(20230040).
[Article] [PDF] [Data + Code]

2023

Hackenburg, K., Brady, W. J., & Tsakiris, M. (2023). Mapping moral language on US presidential primary campaigns reveals rhetorical networks of political division and unity. PNAS Nexus, 2(6), pgad189.
[Article] [PDF] [Data + Code]

* [December 2025] Published my second PhD chapter -- on the levers of political persuasion with conversational AI -- in Science

* [March 2025] Published my first PhD chapter -- on scaling laws for static political persuasion with large language models -- in PNAS

* [July 2024] Joined the UK AI Security Institute as a Research Scientist

* [June 2024] Published my MSc thesis on political microtargeting with large language models in PNAS

* [October 2023] Joined The Alan Turing Insitute, the UK's national instutite for data science and artificial intelligence, as a doctoral researcher

* [September 2023] Started my PhD in Social Data Science at the University of Oxford, funded by a Clarendon Scholarship

My full CV can will soon be found here. In the meantime:

My doctoral research, funded by a Clarendon Scholarship and supervised by Chris Summerfield and Helen Margetts, evaluates the capabilities of artificial intelligence systems to influence human attitudes, behaviour, and cognition.

Alongside my PhD, I work as a Research Scientist at the UK AI Security Institute. Previously, I worked at The Alan Turing Institute, the UK's national institute for AI and data science, and at the Centre for the Politics of Feelings, an interdisciplinary political neuroscience lab devoted to the study of emotions and political behaviour. I’ve also worked at The Brookings Institution and on several U.S. national political campaigns.

Prior to my PhD, I completed MSc degrees in Social Data Science (at the University of Oxford) and Political Communication (at the London School of Economics and Political Science). I hold a BA in Political Science (from the University of Wisconsin-Madison).