Jeffrey Liu

I am a candidate for a DPhil in Politics under the supervision of Professor Daniel McDermott. I am also a Researcher at the Cambridge Initiative for Peace Settlements (University of Cambridge) where I work in collaboration with Professor Marc Weller and Dr Mark Retter.

My current academic research lies at the intersection between jurisprudence, political theory, and the philosophy of technology and examines how predictive policing interacts with liberal accounts of political subjectivity. On the jurisprudential side, my work analyses the legal and political controversy surrounding existing and forthcoming deployments of predictive policing technologies in liberal democracies such as the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Germany. On the political theoretical side, I explore how predictive policing as a governing strategy clashes with liberal accounts of individualism and privacy. Finally, on the philosophy of technology side, I examine the social and political theory which informs dominant models of predictive policing, with particular emphasis on the political implications of advancements in machine learning and AI for liberal democracies.

My professional work with the Cambridge Initiative for Peace Settlements centres on international law and ongoing conflicts. I worked in collaboration with the RAND Corporation on international consultation for the ongoing conflict in Palestine. I personally prepared in-depth analysis on government and private sector plans for the ‘day after’ for an international group of diplomats, incumbent and former government officials, academics, and prominent civil society figures.

Prior to starting my DPhil, I completed my MPhil in Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge where I graduated with a distinction. My MPhil research was on the appropriation of Carl Schmitt’s political thought by left-wing thinkers to theorise about the environmental crisis. Prior to that, I completed my BA (Hons) in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the University of Oxford. I wrote an undergraduate thesis on the influence of the legal thought of Carl Schmitt in the People’s Republic of China and the passage of the National Security Law in Hong Kong.