People

Kento Ohara

Bachelor of Liberal Arts, MPhil

AFFILIATION
College
St Antony's College
Course
DPhil Politics
supervisor

Thank you for visiting my profile. I am a DPhil student reading Politics at St Antony's College. I recently completed the DPIR's MPhil course in Politics (Comparative Government) with Distinction at St Hugh's College. I study the political economy of accountability, representation and legislative politics in parliamentary systems. Methodologically, I am interested in the application of causal inference designs, experiments and Natural Language Processing techniques in conducting research related to my substantive interests.

Prior to joining the DPIR, I received a Bachelor of Liberal Arts from the University of Tokyo with a major in British Area Studies and a minor in Interdisciplinary Social Sciences. My undergraduate thesis on contemporary British parliamentary reform was awarded the First National High School Memorial (Dean's) Award. I also completed the European Studies Programme at SciencesPo, Paris during my undergraduate study.

Research interests

  • Substantive topics: accountability, descriptive, substantive and dyadic representation

  • Area foci: UK, Japan, Germany, Europe

  • Methods: causal inference designs, experiments, NLP

Degrees

  • MPhil in Politics (Comparative Government), St Hugh's College, University of Oxford (2024, Distinction)

  • Bachelor of Liberal Arts (Area Studies major and Interdisciplinary Social Sciences minor), University of Tokyo (2022, Dean's Award)

Visiting positions

  • Visiting researcher, DYNAMICS research training group, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (summer 2025)

Working papers

  • Parliamentary reform and executive accountability: The role of non-substantive preferences (MPhil thesis paper)

  • District magnitude and gender representation in personalised elections

Training

  • Oxford Spring School in Advanced Research Methods (2025)

  • Summer Institute in Computational Social Science, Tokyo (online, 2023)

  • European Studies Programme, SciencesPo, Paris (2020, Grade A+)

Languages

  • English (professional)

  • Japanese (native)

  • French (intermediate)

  • German (intermediate)

Awards

  • Oxford-Berlin Research Partnership Flexible Fund Award (2025)

  • First National High School Memorial (Dean's) Award (2022)