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Dr Laszlo Horvath

Positions held:
  • Senior Lecturer, School of Social Sciences
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  • Overview

    Overview

    Biography

    I joined Birkbeck in 2021, where I direct the MSc in Political Communication and help organise the Birkbeck Centre for British Political Life. Previously, at the University of Exeter, I taught quantitative methods and worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on several projects investigating media exposure and media effects in the UK. My research interest are in digital politics and governance, and more recently, public engagement in science-based policy.

    Qualifications

    • PhD Politics, University of Exeter, 2018
    • MA Politics, Central European University, 2014
    • BA Politics, Eötvös Loránd University, 2011
  • Research

    Research

    Research Centres and Institutes

    • Deputy Director, Birkbeck Centre for British Political Life

    Research projects

    Evaluating civic technologies for local political engagement

    Abstract

    with Ben Worthy

    Civic technologies include a range of tools and platforms designed to support civic engagement. They might, for example, provide information about community initiatives or allow citizens to raise local issues with councillors.

    Do they enhance public inclusion? This project will produce empirical evidence to help policymakers and civic groups design and promote specific interventions. It will include a large-scale survey experiment with UK adults and a follow-up community study in a local library.

    Industry and community partners:

    • mySociety
    • Tate South Lambeth Library
    Funded by
    Economic and Social Research Council
    Funding amount
    £50,000

    Exploring citizens' responses to science in public policy through natural language processing and conjoint experiments

    Abstract

    with Deborah Mabbett

    Funded by
    British Academy
    Funding amount
    £81,000
    Funder ID code
    CST\220016
    Outcomes
  • Supervision and teaching

    Supervision and teaching

    Supervision

    Supervisions within Birkbeck:
    3

    I welcome enquiries from students who are interested in undertaking research in any areas related to political communication broadly (e.g. the democratic performance of the media, citizens' trust in media institutions, misinformation and fact-checking, media and campaign effects) as well as digital technologies in governance and politics.

    Current doctoral researchers

    • DANIEL GIBBONS
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor, onwards
      Title of thesis:
      A Machine Republic?: AI, Child Welfare, and the Limits of State Knowledge
      Description:

      This thesis will examine the (micro-)epistemology of the state, that is, how states have come
      to over time and ought to know propositional facts about individuals, rather than the overall
      ‘grid’ used for understanding populations studied by, say, James C. Scott. To do this, it
      studies the emergence of predictive AI systems and their ethical, political, and regulatory
      implications. Predictive systems are an important topic due to the recent proliferation of AI
      systems in government and developments in AI regulation, such as the Netherlands creating
      a register of government AI systems and the UK AI Opportunities Plan.


      This research will focus primarily on the use of AI in children’s social care since it is
      understudied relative to criminal justice yet involves extremely vulnerable individuals. The
      focus on children’s social care is timely, given the 2022 Care Review highlighting the need to
      make care proceedings more just and to policy research I co-authored showing low accuracy
      for AI models used in child protection. The Allegheny Family Screening Tool, the most
      developed and deployed AI tool in this sector and the subject of extensive academic and
      political debate will be the subject of a detailed case study.


      This thesis will make three sets of contributions. First, it will contribute to the normative and
      empirical understanding of why states learn facts about individuals, which has recently
      become prominent due to the Post Office Horizon and Robodebt scandals. Second, to an
      account of how complex ‘black box’ predictive systems intervene in that process, particularly
      by formalising and deepening the quantification of risk. Third, it will address the regulatory
      implications of these changes, particularly given they fall outside of the regulation of official
      statistics and given particular significance when the individuals involved are vulnerable.

    • FIONA DENT
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor, onwards
      Title of thesis:
      To explore and identify the novel effects of Large Language Models and Generative AI on political agency
    • SACHA MARTEN
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor, onwards

    Teaching

    I am delivering core teaching for the MSc in Political Communication and postgraduate quantitative methods.

    Teaching modules

    • Masterclass in Social Research (SSPO019S7)
    • Introduction to Quantitative Social Research (SSPO239H7)
    • Applied Social Data Analysis in R (SSPO240H7)
    • Dissertation MSc Politics (SSPO244D7)
    • Political Communications: Media, Campaigns, and Citizens (SSPO267S7)
    • Digital Politics (SSPO272S5)
  • Publications

    Publications

    Article

    Book Section

    Monograph

    Other

    External Repositories