Zoe Hawkins

Zoe Hawkins is Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford. Zoe is a contributor to DIESL Lab’s Political Geography of AI Infrastructure project, and her research explores the geopolitical power of big tech companies.
Zoe is currently Head of Policy Design at the Tech Policy Design Centre, Australian National University and a research consultant with the OECD’s AI Policy Observatory (OECD.AI) on AI compute policy. Zoe has worked on tech policy for the Australian government across communications, innovation, and foreign policy portfolios, both as a ministerial adviser and in the public service. Zoe was previously a member of Amazon’s International Public Policy team and an Analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Publications

Hawkins, Z., Lehdonvirta, V. and Wu, B. (2025). AI Compute Sovereignty: Infrastructure Control Across Territories, Cloud Providers, and Accelerators. Working paper available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5312977
Lehdonvirta, V., Wú, B., & Hawkins, Z. (2025). Weaponised interdependence in a bipolar world: how economic forces and security interests shape the global reach of US and Chinese cloud data centres. Review of International Political Economy, 32(5), 1442–1467. https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2025.2489077
Lehdonvirta, V., Wu. B., and Hawkins, Z. (2024) Compute North vs. Compute South: The Uneven Possibilities of Compute-based AI Governance Around the Globe. 7th AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society. San Jose, CA, October 21-23, 2024.