T.J. Foley is a Fellow in the Program on Science, Technology and Society at Harvard Kennedy School. His research focuses on the political, economic, and constitutional implications of emerging technologies. He combines archival and ethnographic work to examine how the rights and entitlements afforded in democratic governments are reconstituted via digital technologies.

His current book project (co-authored with Sascha Meinrath), Watchdogs: The History of the Federal Trade Commission, forthcoming from the University Press of Kansas in late 2026, argues that the essential right to a competitive economic order provided by America’s competition law regime has been hollowed out by the adoption of narrow econometric models focused on price. Drawing on archival analysis and interviews, the book traces how this shift—driven by the confluence of ideological and technological developments rather than formal legal changes—contributed to corporate concentration rivaling the Gilded Age. His research has been published in Energy Research & Social Science, the Journal of Online Trust and Safety, and the American Journal of Legal History.

T.J. holds an AB from Harvard College in Social Studies, for which he wrote a thesis on the political status of large technology companies. He’s worked in the private sector in the startup and consulting spaces and has designed technology to expand access to justice for low-income tenants in New York City.