Dr Jelena Dzakula is an LSE Fellow specialising in communications policy and regulation, citizenship, technological innovations, and digital government. She holds a PhD in Media Policy from the University of Westminster, CAMRI, and a Master’s degree from the same University.

Dr Dzakula previously worked at the Universities of Leicester, Westminster and Salford. She also worked at Ofcom, Spectrum Group, and has conducted research and evaluations for the European Commission, RISJ, University of Oxford, Food Standards Agency, and a number of microfinance providers. She is the UK’s lead on the European Commission’s Media Plurality Monitor that aims to assess the risks to media plurality coming from socio-political, economic and legal domains.

Speaking of her research, Dr Dzakula’s doctoral research looked at the transparency and accountability of regulatory bodies in the UK, as well as to what extent they enable citizen participation into decision-making. The aim of this research has been to establish to what extent existing regulatory innovations can be characterized as democratic but also to devise a framework for this assessment that would apply existing theories to new modes of governance. Her current research builds on this work and looks at the use of data science by the regulators in the UK and the way technological innovations in general are influencing their work.