Ville Aula

Ville works as a Digital Policy Postdoctoral Researcher in the "Resilient Media for Democracy in the Digital Age" -project led by Nicole Stremlau. He is a specialist in digital governance and use of digital technologies in policymaking. He previously worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher in AI and Public Policy in the University of Helsinki. Alongside his research, he is writing a Finnish-language non-fiction book titled "What is Digital Policy."

Ville has an interdisciplinary background in politics and communication. He has completed a PhD in Data, Networks and Society at London School of Economics, an MSc in Social Science of the Internet in University of Oxford, and an MSc in Political Science and Public Policy in University of Helsinki. Ville's research has been awarded with the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) PhD Studentship at LSE, the Fulbright Postgraduate Scholarship to spend a year as visitor to University of California, San Diego, and the Bleddyn Davies Prize for best early career paper in the journal Policy and Politics. 

Ville's teaching covers both political science and digital policy. At LSE he worked as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Department of Government for four years, teaching undergraduate classes in "Public Policy Analysis" and "Politics and Policy of Data Science." In University of Helsinki  he led the teaching in a postgraduate module titled "Digital Politics and Policy."

Ville has worked extensively with governments and policymakers. In 2019 Ville led the writing of a report commissioned by the Parliament of Finland to assess needs for reform in parliamentary practice. His other commissioned reports have explored digital tools to promote transparency in the legislative process and evidence-based policymaking in parliaments, and he has contributed to several other policy reports on governmental reform. In 2020 Ville worked as a seconded PhD researcher in the UK Department of Digital, Culture, Media, and Sports (DCMS), supporting the UK Digital Regulation Team. Prior to his research career Ville worked as a public sector strategy consultant in Finland.