Close
Mr Ollie Ballinger
Lecturer (Teaching) in Geocomputation
Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis
Faculty of the Built Environment
- Joined UCL
- 11th Oct 2021
Research summary
Ollie has worked as a Data Analyst/Research Assistant on projects at the Oxford Department of Politics and International Relations, the Blavatnik School of Government, and the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies.
As co-director of the Rhodes Artificial Intelligence Lab, he led a project with the UN World Food Programme and built a tool that identifies informal settlements using supervised classification and freely available inputs.
Teaching summary
Ollie currently teaches Quantitative Methods 2: Data Science and Visualisation (BASC0005 - Undergraduate), Spatial Data Capture, Storage and Analysis (CASA0009 - Masters Level), Data Science for Spatial Systems (CASA0006 - Masters Level).
He's tutored courses on Non-Violent Resistance Movements (BA History and Politics) at Wadham College, Oxford, as well as Quantitative Research Methods (MSc Global Governance and Diplomacy) at the Oxford Department for International Development.
Education
- Oxford University
- Doctorate, DPhil |
Biography
Ollie is currently finishing his PhD at the Oxford Department of International Development, where his research focuses on leveraging computational methods to understand the drivers of insurgent recruitment in Turkey. A quantitative social scientist by training, he is interested in the use of remote sensing and spatial data science to analyse the social world.
Ollie is a big fan of open source software development, research, and investigative work. He built an image processing library in Python that uses deep learning to turn unstructured image data into a social network graph based on co-appearance in photographs. He also occasionally writes for Bellingcat, and recently co-wrote an open source investigation into pollution by multinational oil companies in Iraq. In his free time, he writes blog posts on all things spatial, from building a 3D model of the Beirut explosion to using street lamps to correct visual bias in election maps.