I analyze strategies for enhancing safety, security, & human flourishing in the digital age. 

I hold a DPhil (PhD) from the Oxford Internet Institute and am a researcher on the Programme on Democracy and Technology. My research examines the gendered dimensions of political communication to understand how the public, and public figures, utilize social media during wartime. I build structural topic models to uncover salient topics discussed on social media and uses social network analysis to understand how those topics are interacted with, and by whom. My most recent research paper analysed how Ukrainian women and men politicians utilized social media to conduct digital diplomacy and counter Russian disinformation during Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 

I also study Russian and Chinese disinformation, and possible countermeasures to the spread of manipulative content. I have researched the prevalence of gendered disinformation in the 2020 U.S. presidential election with The Wilson Centre, and how state-backed information operations have targeted France as a Visiting Fellow at Institut Montaigne. My work mapping Russian information operations through network visualization has been published by the Defence Strategic Communications Journal and featured on CBC News, the LA Times, Engineering and Technology Magazine, and Jane’s Intelligence Review. My work on the evolution of international disinformation operations has been funded by the Mozilla Foundation and the Data Science Institute at City, University of London. 

I hold an MSc (Data Science) from City, University of London and a BA Hons (Professional Communication, Minor in Physics) from Toronto Metropolitan University. In a previous academic life, I studied human-robot interaction and wrote robot jokes for hitchBOT.

For professional inquiries, please feel free to reach me at alexandra.pavliuc[at]oii.ox.ac.uk. For media queries, kindly contact press[at]oii.ox.ac.uk.