Alayna Yap is a MPhil International Relations candidate at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford. Her research decodes Chinese and Russian political communications through combining computational social science methods and cybersecurity tools, with a focus on authoritarian informationalism, algorithmic manipulation, cyber warfare, and Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference tactics. Her thesis work examines the prevalence of coordination, automation, and disinformation in foreign communications towards African states.
She was an AI Safety Fellow at Oxford AI Safety Initiative and a Country Delegate sponsored by the Geneva Centre for Security Policy in a simulated working group on the international regulation of lethal autonomous weapons systems under former President of the Swiss Confederation Micheline Calmy-Rey. She is also a member of the Oxford Intelligence Group and Women’s Intelligence Network at King’s Centre for the Study of Intelligence.
Alayna holds a BA in Political Humanities from the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po Paris) and a BSocSci with Honours in Political Science from the National University of Singapore, where she graduated top of cohort. Previously a twice-exhibited photojournalist, her previous work in examined audiovisual propaganda and political photography.
