Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt

Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt is a leading researcher in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and was one of the originators of the interdisciplinary field of Web Science. He is the incoming Chair of AI@Oxford Research and Professor of Computing Science at the University of Oxford. He is also Senior Distinguished Scientist at the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford. He served as Principal of Jesus College, Oxford from 2015 – 2026.

He is chairman of the Open Data Institute which he co-founded with Sir Tim Berners-Lee.  In 2009 he was appointed Information Advisor by the Prime Minister and, working with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, led the development of the highly acclaimed data.gov.uk website.  In 2010, he joined the UK government’s Public Sector Transparency Board – overseeing Open Data releases across the public sector.  He continues to advise Government in a number of roles and in 2025 he was appointed to the Council for Science and Technology, which advises the Prime Minister and the Cabinet on strategic science and technology policy issues that cut across the responsibilities of individual government departments.

Nigel was knighted in 2013 for ‘services to science and engineering’. 

Nigel has a degree in Philosophy and Psychology from the University of Newcastle and a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Edinburgh. In 1983 he joined the Department of Psychology at Nottingham where he established and led a vibrant AI group. In 1992 he became the Allan Standen Professor of Intelligent Systems. He moved to Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science in 2000. At Southampton he researched the next generation of the World Wide Web and was the first Head of the Web and Internet Science Group.  At Oxford he has focused his research in human centred AI in a wide range of applications. 

With over 500 publications, he has researched and published on topics ranging from cognitive psychology to computational neuroscience, Artificial Intelligence to the Semantic Web.  In 2018 he published ‘The Digital Ape: how to live (in peace) with smart machines’, described as a ‘landmark book’.  In May 2024 he published ‘As If Human’, which provides a new approach to the challenges surrounding AI.

He is a Fellow of The Royal Society, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the British Computer Society.