Dean Ball

Dean Woodley Ball is a Research Fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center and author of the Substack Hyperdimensional. His work focuses on artificial intelligence, emerging technologies, and the future of governance. Previously, he was Senior Program Manager for the Hoover Institution's State and Local Governance Initiative. 

He has published on topics including artificial intelligence, neural technology, biotechnology, political theory, public finance, infrastructure, and prisoner re-entry. His paper “Neither Harbour nor Floor: Contemplating the Singularity with Michael Oakeshott” will be published in a forthcoming volume titled Liberalism Revisited, to be published by Palgrave. He is the author of “Ideas of Another Order: Michael Oakeshott and Confucius in Conversation,” an essay in comparative political theory between the West and China, which was published in Collingwood and British Idealism Studies. His writing has appeared in National Affairs, The Dispatch, The Hill, the Orange County Register, Investor’s Business Daily, the Coolidge Quarterly, and National Review, and his research has been published by the Manhattan Institute and the Hoover Institution.

Prior to his role at the Hoover Institution, he served as Executive Director of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation, based in Plymouth, Vermont and Washington, D.C. In that role he oversaw a foundation with assets of more than $20 million, an annual budget of $3 million, and the Coolidge Scholarship, a full-ride, merit-based undergraduate program that is among the most competitive and prestigious scholarships in the United States. He worked as the Deputy Director of State and Local Policy at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research from 2014–2018, and as Director of the Adam Smith Society from 2018–2020. In addition, he oversaw the Institute’s Hayek Book Prize, one of the most financially generous book prizes in the world. 

He has also worked as an independent consultant, allowing him to focus on projects near and dear to his heart. These have included efforts to reform policing in Argentina and Chile and to recreate, at small scale, the Florentine guild system for sacred liturgical art. 

He serves on the Board of Directors of the Alexander Hamilton Institute and on the Advisory Council of the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue University. He graduated magna cum laude from Hamilton College in 2014 with a B.A. in History, and currently resides in Washington, D.C. with his girlfriend Abigail and their two cats, Io and Ganymede.