Danielle Allen
Professor of Public Policy, James Bryant Conant University Professor
Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation
Renovating constitutional democracy for the 21st century
The Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation works to ensure that public policies, political institutions, and the technologies that support them are designed and judged by how well they strengthen constitutional democracy—expanding freedom and political equality, building fully inclusive institutions, and widening avenues for participation and connection, all rooted in the conditions people need to flourish.
Too often, democracy is treated as a stand-alone policy domain rather than a standard shaping all policymaking; the Lab works to change this by developing new democracy-supporting frameworks and standards, grounded in the field-defining scholarship of Danielle Allen. We advance this work through research, teaching, field-building, proof-of-concept pilots, professional training, network-building, and the promotion of exemplary policy solutions that equip decisionmakers to deliver responsive representation and effective governance for large, complex, digitally powered societies.
Areas of Focus
- Technology and Democracy: Learn more about our work here.
- New Frameworks for Political Economy
- Universal Civic Learning Policy
- Governance Mechanisms
Lab Staff
Sadie Cox
Executive Assistant to Danielle Allen
Darshan Goux
PhD, Senior Lab Director
Sarah Hubbard
Associate Director for Technology & Democracy
Ryan Pell
Coordinator, Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation
Lab Members
Ben Barsky
Lab Affiliate; Assoc. Professor, UCSF Law School
Mathis Bitton
Doctoral Student, Harvard Government Department
Carly Chen
Researcher, Harvard College
Emily Clough
Research Fellow, AY2025-2026
Charlie Covit
Researcher, Harvard College
Emma Ebowe
Assistant Professor, College of William and Mary
Keren Elmore
Harvard College
Ami Fields-Meyer
Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation
July 2024-June 2026
Tyler Fisher
Policy Fellow, AY2025-2026
Cynthia Garcia
Researcher, Harvard College
Yen-Lin Huang
Non-resident Policy Fellow, AY2025-2026
Martina Jaramillo
Researcher, Harvard College
Thao Nguyen Kelly
Policy Fellow, AY2025-2026
Femi Ositade
Researcher, Harvard College
Hannah Kunzman
Researcher;
Doctoral Student, Harvard Government Department
Hillary Lehr
Policy Fellow, AY2025-2026
Gideon Lichfield
Policy Fellow, AY2025-2026
Jeremy McKey
Policy Fellow, AY2025-2026
Sonali Nijhawan
Policy Fellow, AY2025-2026
Rishab Ramamurthy
Researcher, Harvard Law School
Priyanka Sethy
Doctoral Student, Harvard Government Department
Karan Shah
Researcher, Harvard College
Christine Slaughter
Research Fellow, AY2025-2026
Allison Stanger
Senior Fellow, Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation;
Co-Director and Co-Investigator, GETTING-Plurality Research Network
Feb. 2024-Jan. 2026
Summer Sun
Researcher, Harvard College
Kenneth Woodland
Researcher, Harvard Kennedy School
Paulius Yamin
Non-resident Policy Fellow, AY2025-2026
Lab Alumni
Felix Chen
Harvard College
Naomi Corlette
Harvard College
Sofia Corona
Researcher, Harvard College
Caroline Curran
Researcher, Harvard College
Owen Ebose
Researcher, Harvard College
Eli Frankel
Researcher, Harvard College
Brian Highsmith
Doctoral Student, Harvard Government Department
Conner Huey
Researcher, Harvard College
David Knight
Principal Investigator;
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Columbia University
Woojin Lim
Researcher, Harvard College
Neil Miller
Researcher, Harvard Kennedy School
Cris Moore
Professor, Santa Fe Institute
Saddat Nazir
Researcher, Harvard College
Alex Pascal
Lab Affiliate; Executive Director, Berkman Klein Center
Charlotte Ritz-Jack
Researcher, Harvard College
Christian Schmidt
Researcher;
Master in Urban Planning Candidate, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Andrei Stupu
PhD; Fulbright Alumnus
Tessel van Oirsouw
EthicAI and Former Visiting Fellow, Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation
Shlomit Wagman
Allen Lab Policy Fellow AY 2023-2025
Sam Wang
Policy Fellow, AY2025-2026
Jama Willis
Communications, Harvard College
Upcoming Events
Black Women Civic Leaders in Massachusetts and Renovating Democracy
In-Person Event
Ash Center Seminar Room 225, Suite 200, 124 Mount Auburn Street
1:30 pm – 2:30 pm EDT
The Latest News and Research
Policy Brief
How AI Fails Us
Researchers and funders should redirect focus from centralized autonomous general intelligence to a plurality of established and emerging approaches that extend cooperative and augmentative traditions as seen in successes such as Taiwan’s digital democracy project to collective intelligence platforms like Wikipedia.
Towards Platform Democracy: Policymaking Beyond Corporate CEOs and Partisan Pressure
Facebook, YouTube, and other platforms make incredibly impactful decisions about the speech of billions. Right now, those decisions are primarily in the hands of corporate CEO’s—and heavily influenced by pressure from partisan and authoritarian governments aiming to entrench their own power.
Aviv Ovadya proposes an alternative: platform democracy.
The Real Cost of Surveillance Capitalism: Digital Humanism in the US and Europe
Alison Stanger argues that the real threat to liberal democracies is not capitalism, but the growing inequalities that corporate surveillance in its unfettered form both reveals and exacerbates.
Truth from the machine: artificial intelligence and the materialization of identity
When AI is seen as a source of truth and scientific knowledge, it may lend public legitimacy to harmful ideas about identity.
Democracy’s Tripwire: Global Corruption and Whistleblowing in Europe and the U.S.
This paper compares whistleblower protection politics in Europe and the United States to bring into fuller relief the vital role insider truth-telling plays in combatting global corruption, keeping elites honest, and sustaining liberal democracy.