Dean Ball

Bio

Dean W. Ball is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at FAI. He is a Research Fellow in the Artificial Intelligence & Progress Project at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center and author of Hyperdimensional. His work focuses on emerging technologies and the future of governance. He has written on topics including artificial intelligence, the future of manufacturing, neural technology, bioengineering, technology policy, political theory, public finance, urban infrastructure, and prisoner re-entry.

His work has appeared in National Affairs, The New Atlantis, Pirate Wires, Lawfare, The Dispatch, The Hill, Tech Policy Press, the Washington Post, the Orange County Register, the Coolidge Quarterly, National Review, and other outlets. His paper “Neither Harbour nor Floor: Contemplating the Singularity with Michael Oakeshott” will be part of a forthcoming volume titled Liberalism Revisited, to be published by Palgrave. He is also the author of “Ideas of Another Order: Michael Oakeshott and Confucius in Conversation,” an essay in comparative political theory that was published in Collingwood and British Idealism Studies.

Before he joined Mercatus, Dean was Senior Program Manager for the State and Local Governance Initiative at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, where he managed a research program intended to deliver rigorous and evidence-based public policy research to state and local governments across the country, with a special emphasis on economic development, workforce training, and tax policy.

Prior to that role, Dean served as Executive Director of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation, based in Plymouth, Vermont and Washington, D.C. In that capacity, he oversaw the Coolidge Scholarship, a full-ride, merit-based undergraduate program that is among the most competitive and prestigious scholarships in the United States, as well as a nationwide middle and high school debate program, the Coolidge Senators program for undergraduates, and a variety of historical, archival, and educational initiatives.

He served as the Deputy Director of State and Local Policy and Manager for Special Projects at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research from 2014–2018, and as director of the Adam Smith Society from 2018–2020. 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 on-the-ground efforts to reform policing in Argentina and Chile and to recreate, at small scale, the Florentine guild system for sacred liturgical art.

In 2024 Dean was selected as a fellow for the Roots of Progress Institute’s Blog-Building Initiative. 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 previously served as Secretary, Treasurer, and trustee of the Scala Foundation in Princeton, New Jersey.

He graduated magna cum laude from Hamilton College in 2014 with a B.A. in History, and currently lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife Abigail and their two cats, Io and Ganymede.