Ranjit Lall
Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford
Email: ranjit.lall@sjc.ox.ac.uk
Employment
University of Oxford 2022–present
Professor of International Political Economy
Fellow in Politics, St John’s College
Director, Centre for Technology and Society (CTS)
London School of Economics 2018–2022
Assistant Professor in International Political Economy
Financial Times 2010–2011
Editorial writer (Peter Martin Fellow)
Bank of England 2009–2010
Economist, Financial Stability Division
Education
Harvard University
MA, PhD in Government 2018
Merze Tate Award for best dissertation in the field of international relations, law, and politics, American Political Science Association, 2019
Best Dissertation Award, International Collaboration Section, American Political Science Association, 2019
Robert Noxon Toppan Prize for best dissertation in political science, Department of Government, Harvard University, 2018
University of Oxford (Merton College)
BA (Hons), First Class, Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) 2009
Gibbs Prize for best undergraduate thesis in politics, 2009
Distinction in Preliminary Examinations, 2007
Publications
Book
Making International Institutions Work: The Politics of Performance. 2023. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press. 412 pages.
Reviewed in Governance, International Affairs, International Studies Review, Perspectives on Politics, Political Science Quarterly, and the Review of International Organizations.
Journal Articles and Conference Papers
“The Political Economy of Artificial Intelligence: Evidence from Western Europe.” Conditionally accepted, American Political Science Review.
“PAIR-CI: Calibrated Conditional Independence Testing for Causal Discovery with Incomplete Data.” Forthcoming, Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2026). With Thomas S. Robinson.
“Right-Wing Populism and the COVID-19 Shock: Evidence from Early Superspreader Events.” 2026. Comparative Political Studies. With Thomas R. Davidson and Felix Hagemeister.
“Consequences of the Black Sea Slave Trade: Long-Run Development in Eastern Europe.” 2026. American Political Science Review 120 (3): 1127–1149. With Volha Charnysh.
David Brian Robertson Best Paper Award, Politics and History Section, American Political Science Association, 2025.
“Varieties of Anxieties: Disaggregating Emotion and Voting Behavior in the COVID-19 Era.” 2025. British Journal of Political Science 55: e87. With David Vilalta.
“Making Global Governance Accountable: Civil Society, States, and the Politics of Reform.” 2025. American Journal of Political Science 69 (1): 96–117.
“Efficient Multiple Imputation for Diverse Data in Python and R: MIDASpy and rMIDAS.” 2023. Journal of Statistical Software 107 (9): 1–38. With Thomas Robinson.
“When Does Transparency Improve Institutional Performance? Evidence from 20,000 Projects in 183 Countries.” 2023. American Journal of Political Science 67 (4): 1096–1116. With Dan Honig and Bradley C. Parks.
“The MIDAS Touch: Accurate and Scalable Missing-Data Imputation with Deep Learning.” 2022. Political Analysis 30 (2): 179–196. With Thomas Robinson.
“The Financial Consequences of Rating International Institutions: Competition, Collaboration, and the Politics of Assessment.” 2021. International Studies Quarterly 65 (2): 343–359.
“The Missing Dimension of the Political Resource Curse Debate.” 2017. Comparative Political Studies 50 (10): 1291–1324.
“Beyond Institutional Design: Explaining the Performance of International Organizations.” 2017. International Organization 71 (2): 245–280.
“How Multiple Imputation Makes a Difference.” 2016. Political Analysis 24 (4): 414–433.
“Timing as a Source of Regulatory Influence: A Technical Elite Network Analysis of Global Finance.” 2015. Regulation & Governance 9 (2): 125–143.
“From Failure to Failure: The Politics of International Banking Regulation.” 2012. Review of International Political Economy 19 (4): 609–638.
Book Chapters
“Assessing International Organizations: Competition, Collaboration, and the Politics of Funding.” 2020. In Judith G. Kelley and Beth A. Simmons (eds.), The Power of Global Performance Indicators. New York: Cambridge University Press.
“Reforming Global Banking Standards: Back to the Future?” 2011. In Stefano Ponte, Peter Gibbon, and Jakob Vestergaard (eds.), Governing through Standards: Origins, Drivers and Limitations. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Policy Reports
“The Future of the AI Summit Series: One Year Later.” 2026. Oxford Martin AI Governance Initiative Policy Brief. With Lucia Velasco, Reed Schuler, Robert Trager, Yoshua Bengio, Julia Morse, Benjamin Prud'homme, Joslyn Barnhart, Jonathan Barry, Roxana Radu, Stephen Casper, Duncan Cass-Beggs, Charles Martinet, and Daniel Zhang.
“A Blueprint for Multinational Advanced AI Development.” 2025. Oxford Martin AI Governance Initiative Policy Report. With Adrien Abecassis, Jonathan Barry, Ima Bello, Yoshua Bengio, Antonin Bergeaud, Yann Bonnet, Philipp Hacker, Ben Harack, Sophia Hatz, Joachim Henkel, Holger H. Hoos, Kit Kitamura, Yann Lechelle, Constance de Leusse, Charles Martinet, Nicolas Miailhe, Julia C. Morse, Maximilian Negele, Kyung Ryul Park, Miro Pluckebaum, Murielle Popa-Fabre, Benjamin Prud’homme, Yohann Ralle, Mark Robinson, Charbel-Raphael Segerie, José-Ignacio Torreblanca, Lucia Velasco, and K. VijayRaghavan.
“Verification for International AI Governance.” 2025. Oxford Martin AI Governance Initiative Research Paper. With Ben Harack, Robert F. Trager, Anka Reuel, David Manheim, Miles Brundage, Onni Aarne, Aaron Scher, Yanliang Pan, Jenny Xiao, Kristy Loke, Sumaya Nur Adan, Guillem Bas, Nicholas A. Caputo, Julia C. Morse, Janvi Ahuja, Isabella Duan, Janet Egan, Ben Bucknall, Brianna Rosen, Renan Araujo, Vincent Boulanin, Fazl Barez, Sanaa Alvira, Corin Katzke, Ahmad Atamli, and Amro Awad.
“Proposal for UN Independent Scientific Panel on AI: Balancing Rigor and Legitimacy.” 2025. Oxford Martin AI Governance Initiative White Paper. With Julia Morse and Robert Trager.
“The Future of the AI Summit Series.” 2025. Oxford Martin AI Governance Initiative Policy Memo. With Lucia Velasco, Charles Martinet, Henry de Zoete, Robert Trager, Duncan Snidal, Ben Garfinkel, Kwan Yee Ng, Haydn Belfield, Don Wallace, Yoshua Bengio, Benjamin Prud'homme, Brian Tse, Roxana Radu, Ben Harack, Julia Morse, Nicolas Miailhe, Scott Singer, Matt Sheehan, Max Stauffer, Yi Zeng, Joslyn Barnhart, Imane Bello, Xue Lan, Oliver Guest, Duncan Cass-Beggs, Lu Chuanying, Sumaya Nur Adan, Markus Anderljung, and Claire Dennis.
“International Governance of Civilian AI: A Jurisdictional Certification Approach.” 2023. arXiv preprint 2308.15514. With Robert Trager, Ben Harack, Anka Reuel, Allison Carnegie, Lennart Heim, Lewis Ho, Sarah Kreps, Owen Larter, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, Simon Staffell, and José Jaime Villalobos.
“Reforming Global Banking Rules—How the G20 Can Save the Global Economy.” 2010. DIIS Policy Brief. With Jakob Vestergaard and Martin Højland.
Other Awards, Grants, and Fellowships
British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant, 2025.
Welcome Grant, St John’s College, University of Oxford, 2025.
Visiting Research Fellow, Department of Political Science, University of California, San Diego, 2021–2022.
Associate Member, Nuffield College, University of Oxford, 2018–present.
Postdoctoral Research Associate, Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance, Princeton University, 2017–2018.
Leamer-Rosenthal Prize for Open Social Science, Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences, 2017.
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) Dissertation Completion Fellowship, Harvard University, 2016–2017.
Research Grant, Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University, 2016.
Mid-Dissertation Grant, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs (WCFIA), Harvard University, 2015.
Pre-Doctoral Fellowship (full year of funding), Global Economic Governance Programme, University of Oxford, 2013–2014.
Dillon Fellowship Fund Award, GSAS, Harvard University, 2011–2013.
Exhibition (scholarship), Merton College, University of Oxford, 2007.
Fowler Prize for distinguished performance in Collections (termly examination), Merton College, University of Oxford, received three times between 2006 and 2009.
Teaching Experience
University of Oxford
International Relations (undergraduate), 2022–present.
International Relations (graduate), 2022–present.
International Relations DPhil Research Seminar (graduate), Michaelmas 2023, Hilary 2025, Trinity 2026.
London School of Economics
International Political Economy (undergraduate), 2018–2021.
International Political Economy (graduate), Michaelmas 2018–2019.
Research Design in International Political Economy (graduate), 2019–2021.
Politics of Money in the World Economy (graduate), Michaelmas 2020.
Politics of Money in the World Economy (undergraduate), Michaelmas 2020.
Qualification: Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education, 2020.
Harvard University (as teaching fellow)
International Law (undergraduate), Fall 2015.
International Political Economy (undergraduate), Fall 2013, Fall 2014.
Academic Service
University of Oxford
Search Committee for Associate Professorship in International Relations, Nuffield College, 2026.
Chair of Examiners for History and Politics undergraduate degree, 2024–2025.
International Relations Graduate Studies Committee, 2024–present.
Investment Committee, St John’s College, 2024–present.
Search Committee for John G. Winant Associate Professorship in U.S. Foreign Policy, Nuffield College, 2024.
Chair of the International Relations Panel, 2023–2024.
Educational Policy Committee, St John’s College, 2023–2025.
Politics Subject Examination Board, 2022–2025.
London School of Economics
Search Committee for Assistant Professorship in International Political Economy, 2019.
PhD Sub-Committee, 2019–2021.
Search Committee for Assistant Professorship in International Institutions, 2018.
Co-convener of International Political Economy Research Workshop, 2018–2020.
Business Recovery Team, 2018–2019.
Profession
Editorial Board Member, American Journal of Political Science, 2025–2027.
Reviewer for American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Foreign Policy Analysis, International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of European Public Policy, Journal of Politics, New Political Economy, Political Analysis, Public Administration, Regulation & Governance, Review of International Organizations, Review of International Political Economy, World Politics.
Program Chair, International Collaboration Section, American Political Science Association, 2020 Annual Meeting.
Software
citest. Python package (on PyPI) for testing conditional independence in incomplete regression analysis with machine learning methods. With Thomas Robinson.
citestR. R package (on CRAN) equivalent of citest. With Thomas Robinson.
MIDASpy. Python package (on PyPI) for accurate and efficient multiple imputation with deep learning methods. With Thomas Robinson and Alex Stenlake.
rMIDAS: Multiple Imputation with Denoising Autoencoders. R package (on CRAN) equivalent of MIDASpy. With Thomas Robinson and Alex Stenlake.
Datasets
Accountability in Global Governance (AGG) database.
Performance of International Organizations Project (PIIP) database.
World of International Nongovernmental Organizations (WINGO) database.
Project Performance Database (PPD) v.2.1. With Dan Honig and Bradley C. Parks.
