19–26 January 2027 Bangkok, Thailand

Possible AIs: Institute for Speculative Technologies

19–26 January 2027
Bangkok, Thailand
Application Deadline: 30 October 2026

The Institute

Women and people with diverse gender and sexual identities and practices have been
disproportionately impacted, affected and made vulnerable by the widespread rise of artificial intelligence (AI). While the technology-facilitated discrimination and violence towards these communities is not new, AI poses new challenges in the online space which cannot be easily explained or addressed by our existing frameworks of gender and sexual justice and rights.

CREA, in collaboration with the Digital Narratives Studio (DNS), brings to you the Possible AIs: Institute for Speculative Technologies to demystify AI, trace its histories, re-create it and open the door to imagining other kinds of AI based on feminist principles and values. Through feminist and queer pedagogies, invitational dialogues, reflective co-creation, and critical reading and thinking, we propose new ways by which to understand the entanglements of gender, sexuality and AI.

What would AI look like if it was built on feminist principles and values of livability?
How can we shift from “fixing” today’s AI to imagining and creating entirely new ones?
What is our relationship with AI beyond training, upskilling and apps?
What else needs to change for AI to become a force for transformation, rather than another
extractive system?

Timings: 9 am to 7 pm (all 7 days)
Venue will be announced shortly.

Institute Pedagogy: What powers the Institute?

“If you say you don’t do AI, it means AI is doing you.”

AI is often presented as opaque, difficult and unknowable. This concentrates decision-making power — about how AI is built, used and regulated — in the hands of a technocratic few. Those most affected, especially communities facing multiple forms of vulnerability, are often excluded from these conversations. The Institute connects the emerging harms, challenges and possibilities of AI with the historical questions of Life, Labor, Language, Logic, Love and Learning. Together, we will imagine and design technologies that work towards livable, just and care-centred futures. The Institute positions you to imagine new AI technologies through your lived experience and collective knowledge.

This is a 7-day, knowledge-rich, learning-intensive Institute led by a global faculty committed to intersectional care in the Global Majority. We combine lectures, collective readings, historical analysis, case studies and speculative prototyping, led by an expert faculty.

Participants will explore AI from many angles — its imaginaries (the stories and visions that
shape it), data practices, interfaces, algorithms and infrastructures. Each day ends with the
creation of a prototype fragment — a small but tangible expression of feminist and decolonial values such as livability, refusal and care. On the final day, these fragments come together as conceptual prototypes of “Possible AIs”: systemic visions of AI rooted in equity, sustainability and collective governance.

Participants will leave with material tools, a Living Curriculum and a network of peers.

Faculty will include, in alphabetical order:

Geci Karuri-Sebina is an Associate Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand’s Southern Centre for Inequality Studies. She is a scholar-practitioner working at the intersection of people, place, time, and technological change, currently largely focused on digital governance and the sociotechnical implications of AI in the Global South. She is the ICESCO Chair on Innovation and Futures in Africa, the Founding Director of the Tayarisha Digital Governance Research Group, Organiser of the African Civic Tech Innovation Network, a Fellow of the Machine Intelligence and Neural Discovery (MIND) Institute, and Adjunct Professor at the African Centre for Cities.

Leni Velasco is a feminist activist, movement builder, and narrative change strategist working at the intersections of human rights, democracy, arts and culture, and technology. For over three decades, she has worked with movements, artists, filmmakers, and civil society actors to develop creative and cultural strategies for social change. She is the Steward Anchor of the Narrative Convergence Network, a regional movement building the practice and collective power for narrative change in Southeast Asia, and co-leads the Generative AI Network (GAIN), a global initiative exploring anticipatory futures of generative AI from Global Majority positionalities. She is a co-founder of DAKILA, an artist-activist collective in the Philippines, and a member of the Global Impact Producers Alliance (GIPA).

Maya Indira Ganesh is an assistant research professor and associate director at the
Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, University of Cambridge, UK. A media and
cultural studies scholar, she builds on feminist and decolonial theories, digital humanities,
and science and technology studies to examine the social, cultural, and epistemic
implications of AI in public institutions, cultural heritage organisations, and with
communities as co-producers of AI knowledge and governance. She is author of Auto-
correct: The Fantasies and Failures of AI, Ethics, and the Driverless Car (ArtEZ Press, 2025). From 2021–2024 she co-developed and co-directed Cambridge's first master's programme in AI Ethics & Society. She is an associate at the Digital Narratives Studio, Chinese University of Hong Kong, and a governing board member of Arrow, the Asia Pacific Resource on Women. Prior to academia, she spent a decade working on digital security, gender justice, and online freedom of expression across the global majority.

Nishant Shah is an Associate Professor of Global Media & Culture at The Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Director of the Digital Narratives Studio, connecting research, teaching and public engagement to foster radical hope for collective action. He holds MAs in English Literature and in Women’s Studies from Pune University, India, as well as a PhD in Cultural Studies from Manipal University, India. He is a Faculty Associate at Harvard’s Berkman-Klein Center and a knowledge partner to feminist digital justice networks. He has experience and expertise working with and advising philanthropy organizations and multilateral institutions to convene, create and catalyze communities and networks across the Global South. His recent books, Really Fake (2020) and Overload, Creep, Excess: An Internet from India (2022/23), are available for open access.

Noopur Raval is Assistant Professor of Information Studies at the University of California, where her pedagogical work involves training future librarians, archivists and information professionals. She holds a PhD in Informatics from the University of California, Irvine and an MPhil in Cinema Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She is a feminist educator and researcher of emerging technologies grounded in humanistic and social science approaches and methods. Her work has looked at gig workers, AI in the
global South and, AI in learning and teaching. She is interested in historically examining contemporary technologies with a special focus on majority world phenomena and the enduring legacies of colonialism ininformation and communication technologies. Raval is an alumna of the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, CTSP at University of California, Berkeley and has worked with the Wikimedia Foundation, Microsoft Research labs and NewYork University in the past.

Prarthana Mitra is a feminist practitioner and AI artist working on disability, crip, AI and
cultural practice, mainstreaming gender and justice in the digital rights landscape, centering
care and creativity in their practice in communications, media, and civil society in South Asia. They are currently building out knowledge and communications projects at Point of View, anchoring The Digital Everyday (a residency on bodies, technologies and justice), and the EU’s Gendered Disinformation project in India (with the Association for Progressive
Communications). They are a DRAPAC 2024 Fellow and speaker at the Asia-Pacific regional
Internet Governance Forum 2024 and UN World Data Forum 2024.

Sam Chua is a cultural entrepreneur, occasional consultant, and founding curator of Seapunk Studios (seapunk.asia), an open roaming research-and-imagination collective interested in solarpunk ideas for Southeast Asia and the Global South. His research and practice explore the relationships between strategy, system, curiosity, care, and civilizational change. He has collaborated, worked, and facilitated with the likes of Digital Asia Hub, Metagov, Samsung, Chanel, Li & Fung, CMKL, and the Ethereum Foundation. Based in Asia, he currently lives in Kuala Lumpur.

Prarthana Mitra is a creative practitioner and digital rights researcher based in New Delhi, India. Their practice moves through queer-feminist, decolonial, and tech-critical frameworks of social justice and knowledge formation. They work on the impacts of emerging technologies, developing counter-narratives of technological futures, and regaining creative agency in the digital/AI era. As a Fellow at the Break Change Regenerate residency, Prarthana is experimenting with crip theory, disability justice, and their own experience as a chronically ill person, to counter mainstream AI imaginaries. In digital rights, their research and advocacy interests include gendered disinformation, platform accountability, and algorithmic bias, frequently presenting work around this at RightsCon, AWID, UN World Data Forum. Prarthana is also a community builder, seeding The Digital Everyday cohort of feminist tech enthusiasts from the Global Majority world on behalf of Point of View and Digital Narratives Studio. Currently, they are also consulting withn GenderSphere and UN Women for a project on Technology-Facilitated Gender Based Violence.

Application Criteria

We welcome community leaders, activists, movement builders, resource holders,
researchers, artists, academics and care-makers working on issues of gender and sexuality, the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex people, sexual rights, sexual and
reproductive health and rights, rights of persons with disabilities, HIV and AIDS, violence
against women or gender-based violence; and/or working on issues of democracy, civic space, freedom of expression, assembly and association, digital rights, who want to expand their theoretical knowledge of these issues through a feminist lens. If you are working to build collective, hopeful, radical futures of care — especially for structurally excluded communities — this space is for you.

You do not need to be a tech expert. What you do need is a critical, curious and creative
interest in how these technologies are shaping our futures — and a willingness to find your
own place in these conversations.

A total of 30 participants will be selected to attend. Participants should be embedded in
human rights and/or feminist movements or civil society, or be working closely with them.

Full-time students are not eligible.

Note: We encourage individuals from the Global South to apply. We invite members of
structurally excluded groups to apply, regardless of location.

Institute Costs
Registration fee:
● USD 250. All selected participants will have to pay this fee (including those receiving
scholarships). This will have to be paid within one week after you receive your
acceptance letter.
Course fees:
● USD 4,000: participants working with donors/funders and international non-
governmental organizations
● USD 2,000: subsidized rate for participants who work with Global South organizations

Course fees include: Tuition, a resource package and accommodation (with breakfast) on a twin-sharing basis for the duration of the Institute (with check in on 18 January and checkout on 26 January). Single-room availability cannot be guaranteed. If you require a single room, please indicate this in your application and write to us at chiara.passuello@creaworld.org. We will do our best to confirm availability a few days before the start of the Institute.

Course fees do not include:
● Travel costs to and from the Institute, including international airfare, visa expenses or
local transport
● Daily lunches and dinners

Travel, Visa and Travel Health Insurance

Participants are responsible for meeting all travel and visa costs, including travel to and from the Institute, and for obtaining a valid entry visa for Thailand (if required) in time. CREA will support visa applications by providing the necessary documentation. Please check the visa requirements, as well as wait times to receive the visa, for your country to Thailand as soon as possible. Please note that every chosen participant (including scholarship recipients) will be required to pay for and obtain travel health insurance before they travel to the Institute, covering the entire duration of the Institute. Your travel health insurance plan should cover COVID-19 hospitalization/health services. CREA will do its best to assist with visas but cannot guarantee their issuance.

Scholarships

A very small number of CREA scholarships are available on a need basis. Please note that the scholarship process is competitive. Apply early to be considered for a scholarship.
● Full Scholarship: CREA covers tuition, resource package and accommodation on a
twin-sharing basis
● Partial Scholarship: CREA covers USD 1,250, you pay USD 750 to CREA
● Contribution Scholarship: CREA covers USD 750, you pay USD 1,250 to CREA

Scholarships do not cover international travel, visa fees or local transport. Scholarship
recipients will have to pay for their lunches and dinners. Scholarship recipients will also have to pay the registration fee.

Individuals eligible for scholarships:
● Those working for national/local organizations in the Global South
● Those working and residing in the Global South
● Those working with or in groups to advance the rights of structurally excluded people

Individuals not eligible for scholarships:
● Those working with international non-governmental organizations
● Those working at donor agencies/funding organizations

We encourage participants to approach donors to ask them to sponsor their participation.
Possible sources for funding include the organization you work for, your organization’s donors (some funders will consider travel grants to current grantees). We suggest that you begin researching options immediately upon submitting your application to us.

What this Institute is NOT for: This Institute is not suited for those seeking short-term skill training or partial attendance.

Accessibility and Language
We will provide reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities. Please indicate your. specific needs in the application.

Mode of Engagement: Full-time for the entire duration of the institute + an online orientation in the week of 4–8 January 2027 for selected participants.

Participant commitments: Full attendance, in an intensively designed curriculum
featuring morning lectures, afternoon reflections, labs, prototyping exercises, and
collective and co-creative practices. Pre-reading and pre-participation tasks as well as
open sharing and good-faith engagement are encouraged.

Language of Participation: The Institute will be conducted in English. The global nature of participants and the faculty make English our default language. You are expected to be fluent in it. While the Institute’s working language is English, we encourage peer-to-peer
interpretation and will support informal explanation where possible. We do not have formal
translation services available.

Selection Process: Based on the application and your alignment with the spirit and ambition of the Institute. As part of the selection process, in some cases we might want to speak with you, for which you will need to be available between 4 th and 11 th November 2026 for an online call.

Decision on selection: By 20 th November 2026. Selections will be made on a rolling basis.

Contact: Write to chiara.passuello@creaworld.org if you have any questions, or if you have
trouble with the online application form.