Our Team

Dr Sara Ratner

Sara is proud to be the Principal Investigator, leading AIEOU. Her vision for the hub arose from her desire to actively engage stakeholders, especially teachers and students, in the co-creation of a shared research agenda to better understand the potential impact of AI on teaching and learning. 

Sara works in the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. She is part of the Learning in Families through Technology (LiFT) project and is also a Junior Research Fellow at Kellogg College. In addition to this, Sara is an Adjunct Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies in Australia and was recently awarded an Oxford Policy Engagement Network (OPEN) Fellowship to collaborate with the OECD. 

Prior to joining the University of Oxford, Sara worked as a classroom teacher, school leader and as the Chief Academic Officer for a global digital assessment platform.

Sara volunteers as the Co-Chair of the UK Research Staff Association (UKRSA) and sits on the University Council’s People Committee at the University of Oxford.

You can connect with Sara here:

Professor Rebecca Williams

Rebecca Williams, Professor of Public Law and Criminal Law in association with Pembroke College, has joined the newly established AI in Education at Oxford University (AIEOU) Hub, which aims to foster a research-informed, ethical, and human-centred approach to AI in education. The Hub, based in the Department of Education and led by Dr Sara Ratner, seeks to address the diverse needs of global education systems through international collaboration and knowledge sharing. The AIEOU Hub is structured around four main pillars—design, regulation, implementation, and impact. It has already established a diverse network that includes academic peers, educators, learners, foundations, governments and industry partners from around the globe, all dedicated to exploring the potential of AI in education responsibly.  

Professor Williams brings her expertise in law to the project, focusing specifically on the regulatory challenges that emerge when integrating AI technologies in educational settings. Her role within the Hub will be to examine legal frameworks across various regions, evaluating whether current regulations strike the right balance between safety and innovation. ‘I’m delighted to be working with Sara on this,” Professor Williams remarked, ‘She has done an amazing job in setting up this Hub, and I’m really grateful to the Social Sciences Division for supporting it!’ 

The goals of the Hub align well with Rebecca's work in the Faculty of Law where, amongst other things, she convenes the Law and Computer Science course alongside Professor Tom Melham (Computer Science).

Professor Elizabeth Wonnacott

Liz is Professor of Language Science based in the Department of Education and St Johns College. She has degrees in Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence (MA Hons, University of Edinburgh) and Brain and Cognitive Sciences  (PhD, University of Rochester) and has previously held academic posts in Psychology at Warwick and Psychology and Language Sciences at UCL.

Broadly speaking, her research explores human language learning. She is interested both in how children learn their first language and how additional languages are learned by learners at different ages. Much of her research uses experimental methods to explore basic science questions about how we learn and process language, and has been funded by the British Academy, ESRC and Leverhulme Trust. In recent years, she has become interested in whether and how in AI technology can support language education, and she is in the early stages of establishing a research program in this area. She is also a consultant scientist for Oxford Language Technologies and in this role contributes to the development of a new second language training app – Omniloquent Language Primer - which leverages the game-changing advancements in AI speech recognition, speech synthesis, and the capabilities of large language models—to support foreign language learning.