Dr Karen Jeffrey
Dr Karen Jeffrey's path into data science developed through her work in consultancy and at an economic think tan
k, where she saw how powerful the influence of data-driven evidence in shaping policy decisions could be. During her PhD in Political Economy, she taught herself to code and began using advanced statistical and experimental methods to investigate how economic forces shape political behaviour.
More recently, she worked in medical informatics analysing large-scale Scottish health records to study long COVID. Her current research focuses on how artificial intelligence is reshaping the economy and how workers and voters respond to these changes. By combining political economy methods with data science approaches, Dr Jeffrey aims to produce research that informs policy and helps ensure the benefits of AI are shared widely.