People

Kento Ohara

Bachelor of Liberal Arts, MPhil

AFFILIATION
College
St Antony's College
Course
DPhil Politics
supervisor

Thank you for visiting my profile. I am a DPhil student reading Politics at St Antony's College. I recently completed the DPIR's MPhil course in Politics (Comparative Government) with Distinction at St Hugh's College. I study accountability, representation and voters' evaluation thereof in contemporary parliamentary democracies, through both institutionalist and behaviouralist perspectives. Methodologically, I am interested in the application of causal inference designs, experiments and Natural Language Processing techniques in conducting research related to my substantive interests.

Prior to joining the DPIR, I received a Bachelor of Liberal Arts from the University of Tokyo with a major in British Area Studies and a minor in Interdisciplinary Social Sciences. My undergraduate thesis on contemporary British parliamentary reform was awarded the First National High School Memorial (Dean's) Award. I also completed the European Studies Programme at SciencesPo, Paris during my undergraduate study.

Research interests

  • Institutional determinants of accountability

  • Descriptive and substantive representation

  • Voters' policy preferences and democratic attitudes

  • UK, Japanese, German and European politics

  • Computational text analysis

Degrees

  • MPhil in Politics (Comparative Government), St Hugh's College, University of Oxford (2024, Distinction)

  • Bachelor of Liberal Arts (Area Studies major and Interdisciplinary Social Sciences minor), University of Tokyo (2022, Dean's Award)

Training

  • DYNAMICS research training group, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (visiting researcher, 2025)

  • Oxford Spring School in Advanced Research Methods (2025)

  • Summer Institute in Computational Social Science, Tokyo (online, 2023)

  • European Studies Programme, SciencesPo, Paris (2020, Grade A+)

Languages

  • English (professional)

  • Japanese (native)

  • French (intermediate)

  • German (intermediate)

Awards

  • Oxford-Berlin Research Partnership Flexible Fund Award (2025)

  • First National High School Memorial (Dean's) Award (2022)

  • Japan Private High School Federation Chair Award (2018)