Payal Arora

Prof. dr. Payal Arora is the Chair of Inclusive AI Cultures in the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University and co-founder of FemLab, a feminist futures of work initiative. She is a digital anthropologist and comes with two decades of user-experience in marginalized contexts to help shape inclusive designs, and data governance policies. She is the author of award-winning books including The Next Billion Users with Harvard University Press. Forbes called her the ‘next billion champion’ and the ‘right kind of person to reform tech.’ About 150 international media outlets have covered her work including the BBC, Financial Times, and The Economist. She has consulted on how to build inclusive designs and policies based on two decades of user-experiences among marginalized communities worldwide for organizations including UNHCR, Spotify, KPMG, Adobe, and GE. She is a Rockefeller Bellagio Resident Fellow Alumnus, and is currently based in Amsterdam. Her new book with MIT Press, From Pessimism to Promise: Lessons from the Global South on Designing Inclusive Tech, comes out on September 3, 2024.