Professor Oliver Hauser

Professor Oliver Hauser is Professor of Economics at the University of Exeter, where he is also Deputy Director (and formerly interim Co-Director) of the Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. In addition, he is a Faculty Affiliate at Harvard University's Sustainability, Transparency and Accountability Research Initiative, and a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow leading the ambitious £1.4m BIG IDEAs project, focused on testing interventions towards more equality in the workplace using randomised controlled trials.

As a faculty affiliate of the Centre for Leadership at the University of Exeter Business School, Professor Hauser advises and works with a wide range of leaders and organisations: He is a Senior Specialist Advisor to Cabinet Office’s and HM Treasury’s Evaluation Task Force, serves as a member on the Evaluation and Trial Advice Panel and on the Steering Committee for the AI Upskilling Fund at the Department of Science, Innovation & Technology, as academic advisor to behavioural science consultancy MoreThanNow, as an academic associate of the Behavioural Insights Team (“Nudge Unit”), as an advisory board member of MeVitae, and as an affiliate at the Vienna Center for Experimental Economics at the University of Vienna. His currently also serves as Vice-Chair of the BBC Children in Need’s South West Advisory Committee and a Trustee of Beacon Collaborative.

Previously, Professor Hauser taught and researched at the Harvard Business School, Harvard Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Extension School. He has held prestigious fellowships at the Alan Turing Institute, the Harvard Behavioral Insights Group and Harvard Women and Public Policy Program. He earned his Ph.D. in Biology from Harvard University and B.Sc. in Physics from the University of Innsbruck.

Professor Hauser's research has been published in leading academic journals such as Nature, Quarterly Journal of Economics, PNAS, Nature Human Behaviour, Nature Communications, Science Advances, The Leadership Quarterly, and Behavioural Public Policy. He also translates the findings of this research into writings for senior leaders and managers in the Harvard Business Review and Exeter Expertise. His research has also drawn attention from news outlets such as the Forbes, Bloomberg, Huffington Post, Vox, Slate, Yahoo, The Conversation, and VICE. 

As an educator and researcher, Professor Hauser has received several awards and prizes, including Poets & Quants’ “40 Under 40” Best MBA Professors award, Pacific Standard's “30 Top Thinkers Under 30” award, the Wharton People Analytics research competition prize, the Harvard University Richard J. Herrnstein Dissertation Prize, the Harvard John Parker Award, the Euregio Young Researcher Award, and several Certificates of Distinction in Teaching.

Qualifications: 

Ph.D. (Harvard University), B.Sc. (University of Innsbruck)