From 19–25 April 2026, The Digital Statecraft Academy convened its inaugural Cambridge Fellowship residency at Jesus College, University of Cambridge — bringing together an exceptional cohort of 16 Fellows from across the globe, spanning Papua New Guinea to Mexico, Qatar to the United States.
The residency marked a defining moment within a year-long Fellowship that began in January 2026. In the preceding months, Fellows had already begun shaping their projects, supported through carefully matched engagements with experts and institutions aligned to their domains. These early exchanges established direction; Cambridge was where those trajectories were interrogated, refined, and, in many cases, fundamentally rethought.
Situated within the intellectual and architectural fabric of Cambridge, and grounded in the collegiate life of Jesus College, the residency unfolded as both a structured programme and an extended conversation. Formal sessions were interwoven with private dinners across colleges, and sustained informal exchanges — creating a continuity of engagement that allowed ideas to be tested not only in seminar rooms, but in dialogue, reflection, and debate.
As outlined in the programme design , the week was conceived not as a sequence of lectures, but as an integrated environment for practice — one in which conceptual frameworks and institutional realities could be brought into direct contact.
From Conceptual Ambition to Institutional Precision
The residency opened with reflections from Dr Julian Huppert, framing the central paradox of our time: the accelerating capabilities of digital technologies alongside the persistent fragility of governance systems tasked with overseeing them.
This tension informed the structure of the week. Fellows were consistently pushed to move beyond generalised ambition toward institutional precision — to identify where governance systems encounter friction, where decision-making breaks down, and where interventions must be designed with both feasibility and consequence in mind.
In this sense, the programme did not ask what digital transformation looks like in theory, but what it requires in practice.
Digital Public Infrastructure as a Governance Paradigm
A central intellectual pillar of the residency was Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), explored not merely as a technical architecture but as a foundational paradigm for governing complex systems.
Through sessions on principles and architecture, followed by applied work examining implementations in India, Estonia, and Brazil, Fellows engaged with DPI as both concept and method. These sessions emphasised core design logics — interoperability, modularity, minimalism, and privacy by design — while also interrogating the institutional conditions required for such systems to function effectively.
Crucially, the work extended beyond analysis. Fellows were tasked with developing “+1” interventions: targeted, context-specific enhancements to existing systems that align with DPI principles. This exercise reframed infrastructure as an evolving governance mechanism — one shaped through incremental, strategic intervention rather than wholesale redesign.
Reframing Data: From Asset to Instrument
The programme’s engagement with data further reinforced this shift toward intentional design.
In sessions led by Dr Stefaan Verhulst, Fellows were introduced to a demand-driven approach to Data for Policy — one that begins not with data availability, but with clearly articulated policy questions. This reframing challenged prevailing tendencies toward data accumulation and instead positioned data as an instrument of decision-making.
The discussion extended into the design of data collaboratives, where participants explored how access to privately held or distributed data can be governed responsibly. Here, the emphasis was not only on technical feasibility, but on legitimacy — ensuring that data sharing mechanisms are aligned with public trust, accountability, and institutional integrity.
AI and the Reconfiguration of Decision-Making
Artificial intelligence was addressed throughout the residency as a force reshaping the conditions under which decisions are made.
In the session led by Dr Sam Reynolds, Fellows engaged directly with the implications of large language models for evidence generation and policy analysis. The discussion moved beyond capability toward epistemology: how knowledge is constructed, mediated, and evaluated when AI systems become intermediaries in the policy process.
Questions of bias, reliability, and evaluation were not treated as abstract concerns, but as operational challenges requiring institutional response. What emerged was a more nuanced understanding of LLMs — not simply as tools, but as actors within decision-making systems, necessitating new forms of scrutiny, governance, and accountability.
Law, Ethics, and the Boundaries of Automation
This institutional perspective was further deepened in Professor Felix Steffek’s session on legal AI, which examined the deployment of AI within justice systems.
Here, the focus turned to the limits of automation: what aspects of legal reasoning can be delegated, what must remain human, and how responsibility is maintained in hybrid systems. These questions illuminated a broader challenge — how to integrate AI into institutional processes without eroding the principles those institutions are designed to uphold.
Sovereignty, Systems, and Strategic Dependence
The question of technological sovereignty provided a critical lens through which many of these themes converged.
In the closing panel on “Sovereignty in the Age of AI,” featuring Maria Axente and Calum Handforth, Fellows examined the strategic implications of dependency, control, and resilience within global digital systems. Discussions moved beyond rhetoric to consider the practical realities of infrastructure ownership, cross-border interoperability, and the limits of national autonomy in a networked technological landscape.
These sessions underscored that sovereignty, in the digital age, is neither absolute nor singular — but negotiated across layers of infrastructure, governance, and international coordination.
Engaging with Systems in Practice
The residency extended beyond Jesus College Cambridge through direct engagement with leading institutions shaping AI development and governance.
At Microsoft Research Cambridge, Fellows explored how AI systems are developed and translated into real-world applications, with discussions focusing on human-centric AI, trust, and technological infrastructure. This was complemented by a visit to the Alan Turing Institute, where conversations centred on AI assurance, environmental applications, and the governance of advanced systems.
Together, these engagements reinforced a core premise of the programme: effective digital statecraft requires continuous interaction between technological innovation and institutional governance.
A fireside conversation with Tabitha Goldstaub added another dimension, connecting these technical and institutional questions to broader societal dynamics and cross-sector realities.
Collective Inquiry and the Discipline of Practice
Beyond formal sessions, the residency was defined by its commitment to collective inquiry.
Working sessions, including the Brainstorming format, created space for Fellows to bring forward real-world governance challenges — often incomplete, constrained, and evolving. These were not exercises in presentation, but in interrogation: examining assumptions, identifying structural constraints, and refining the articulation of problems themselves.
This iterative process — moving between individual work and collective scrutiny — became central to how ideas developed over the course of the week.
Cambridge as an Intellectual Environment
The significance of the Cambridge setting extended beyond its institutional prestige. The collegiate structure from accommodation at Jesus College to private group dinners and cross-college engagements, created a rhythm of interaction that sustained dialogue across contexts. Conversations did not end with sessions; they continued over meals, during walks, punting and within the informal spaces that define Cambridge’s academic life.
This continuity enabled a depth of engagement that is rarely achievable in more bounded programme formats.
From Residency to Implementation
The Cambridge residency made one point unmistakably clear: the challenge of governing the digital age is not defined by a lack of ideas, but by the difficulty of translating them into institutional practice.
A defining moment of the week came at the DSA Launch Reception at The British Academy on 23 April, which brought together Fellows, advisors, and leaders from across academia, government, industry, and civil society. The event marked both the publication of the DSA Founding Manifesto and the formal introduction of the inaugural Fellowship cohort. In her keynote, Secretary of State Rt Hon Liz Kendall MP captured the scale of the transformation underway:
“We are on the cusp of great change: an Industrial Revolution in a decade.”
Her remarks — particularly the emphasis on the responsibility of governments to actively shape technological change — resonated strongly with the work Fellows had been developing throughout the week.
As the Fellowship continues, the work now moves beyond Cambridge. The frameworks, questions, and approaches developed during the residency will be tested within real institutional environments — where constraints are sharper, timelines shorter, and stakes higher.
Digital statecraft, in this sense, is not a static field to be understood, but a capability to be exercised. Its success will depend not only on the strength of ideas, but on their translation into systems, decisions, and practices that can operate effectively within the complexity of the digital age.