Joel Christoph
Ethical AI Governance Fellow 2026
Joel Christoph is a French-Japanese economist and AI governance researcher. He is a Fellow at the ERIA School of Government, where he studies AI and the digital economy as regional public goods, and a Technology and Human Rights Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School's Carr-Ryan Center. His research focuses on mechanism design for frontier AI oversight, compute governance, and inclusive regulatory institutions. His writing has appeared in Lawfare, the World Economic Forum, Tech Policy Press, and Information Polity.
He previously held a Summer Fellowship at the Centre for the Governance of AI and has conducted policy research for the World Bank and the Future of Life Institute. He co-founded the Equiano Institute for AI governance capacity building in Africa and 10Billion.org, a global cooperation network. He holds graduate degrees in economics from the European University Institute and Barcelona School of Economics. He speaks eight languages and has lived across ten countries in Europe, Asia, and the Americas.
About the project
"Participatory AI Assurance for High-Impact Public Services in Plural Societies. I would develop a concise policy toolkit built around three elements. First, clear triggers for when independent review, audit, or redress should be mandatory. Second, structured roles for civil society, community representatives, and, where relevant, faith-based actors in surfacing harms and contesting decisions. Third, governance tools that make responsible compliance easier than avoidance for public agencies and vendors.
The output would be designed for practical use rather than general principle alone. I would aim to produce a short policy brief and implementation note, with illustrations from Southeast Asia and Europe, that could be useful to policymakers, civil society organisations, and international forums."