Introducing the 2025 MSc Thesis Prize Winners
Emerging academic work on LLM evaluation validity and AI moderation legitimacy could inform how APS agencies assess AI tools and govern content moderation decisions.
Key points
- Oxford OII awarded 2025 MSc thesis prizes including work on LLM evaluation validity and AI moderation legitimacy.
- The LLM benchmark validity thesis is directly relevant to APS work on AI procurement and capability assessment.
- An academic prize announcement - useful for identifying emerging research, not for immediate APS action.
Summary
The Oxford Internet Institute has announced its 2025 MSc Thesis Prize winners across Social Data Science and Social Science of the Internet programs. Two theses are of potential interest to AI governance practitioners: Ryan Kearns' work on construct validity in LLM evaluations - arguing that benchmark scores can be misleading and proposing a more rigorous framework for interpreting AI capabilities - and Maximilian Kroner Dale's survey experiment on public perceptions of legitimacy in AI chatbot moderation approaches. The remaining prize-winning theses address social media policy evidence translation and crisis narrative control, with limited direct AI governance relevance.
Implications for Australian agencies
- Monitor Teams involved in AI procurement or capability assessment may want to track Kearns' forthcoming DPhil work on LLM benchmark validity, as it bears on how agencies evaluate AI tool claims.
Implications are AI-generated. Starting points, not advice.
"Introducing the 2025 MSc Thesis Prize Winners" Source: Oxford Internet Institute – News Published: 18 February 2026 URL: https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/news-events/introducing-the-2025-msc-thesis-prize-winners/ The Oxford Internet Institute has announced its 2025 MSc Thesis Prize winners across Social Data Science and Social Science of the Internet programs. Two theses are of potential interest to AI governance practitioners: Ryan Kearns' work on construct validity in LLM evaluations - arguing that benchmark scores can be misleading and proposing a more rigorous framework for interpreting AI capabilities - and Maximilian Kroner Dale's survey experiment on public perceptions of legitimacy in AI chatbot moderation approaches. The remaining prize-winning theses address social media policy evidence translation and crisis narrative control, with limited direct AI governance relevance. Implications for Australian agencies: - [Monitor] Teams involved in AI procurement or capability assessment may want to track Kearns' forthcoming DPhil work on LLM benchmark validity, as it bears on how agencies evaluate AI tool claims. Retrieved from SIMS, 18 May 2026.