William Allen

Dr Will Allen co-organises the regular Early Career Development Lunches for migration researchers and is a founding member of the Migration and Mobility Network.

Will is a Researcher at COMPAS, working with the Global Exchange on Migration and Diversity at the University of Oxford. His research areas are in political communication and public opinion, particularly how media relate to immigration attitudes and policymaking. Currently, he is focusing on data visualisations about migration and mobility as brokered outputs that relate to public perceptions and political behaviour. He is also developing theories of knowledge exchange among migration researchers and the wider public, in order to inform more effective practice.

From 2012 to 2018 he was a Research Officer with the Migration Observatory, also at COMPAS, where he developed and led research on British media coverage about migration issues and specific migrant groups. He also continues to hold interests in how technologies and large-scale data collection relate to human mobility and policymaking.

Recent publications on these subjects have appeared in journals including The International Journal of Press/Politics, International Migration Review, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, and Public Understanding of Science. Notably, his research investigating how British civil society groups use data and evidence won the inaugural 2016 Carol Weiss Prize for the best early-career paper recently published in the journal Evidence & Policy.

He holds degrees in Social Policy and Economics from Alma College (USA), Development Studies (Oxford), and Politics (Oxford).

Personal Website: http://www.wlallen.com/