Possible AIs: Institute for Speculative Technologies

Possible AIs: Institute for Speculative Technologies

9 am to 7 pm (all 7 days)

31 October – 6 November 2025

Eaton Hotel, Hong Kong

About 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.

The Digital Narratives Studio, in collaboration with CREA, brings to you the first pilot Institute which explores possible AIs 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.

Apply by filling and submitting the application form online before 10 September 2025: https://creaworld.org/application-form-possible-ais-2025/

Check more details about the institute: https://creaworld.org/possible-ais-institute-for-speculative-technologies/

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 11th and 18th September 2025 for an online call.

Decision on selection: By 20th September 2025. Selections will be made on a rolling basis.

Contact: Write to ISTGlobal2025@creaworld.org if you have any questions, or if you have trouble with the online application form.

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?

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.

About the Faculty

Faculty will include, in alphabetical order:

Anita Say Chan is an Associate Professor of Information Sciences and Media, and founder of the Community Data Clinic, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. She holds a PhD in History; Anthropology; and Science, Technology, and Society from MIT, USA. She is a scholar and educator dedicated to feminist and decolonial approaches to technology. Her research and teaching interests include globalization and digital cultures, innovation networks and the “periphery”, science and technology studies in Latin America, and hybrid pedagogies in building digital literacies. Her latest book, Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future, was published in 2025 with University of California Press.

Goda Klumbytė is an interdisciplinary scholar working between informatics and humanities & social sciences. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Kassel, Germany, and an MA in Media and Performance Studies from Utrecht University, the  Netherlands. Their research engages feminist new materialism, posthumanism, human-computer interaction and algorithmic systems design, with a specific focus on activating critical intersectional epistemologies in the field of computing. She is currently working on feminist approaches to explainability in AI and machine learning within the project “AI Forensics” (funded by Volkswagen Foundation) at the University of Kassel. They co-edited Posthuman Convergences: Transdisciplinary Methods and Practices (2025) and More Posthuman Glossary with R. Braidotti and E. Jones (2022), and regularly presents work at informatics conferences such as ACM’s CHI, nordiCHI and FAccT. 

Lukas Beckenbauer is a PhD candidate at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, working at the intersection of blockchain and machine learning to implement decentralized and multi-agent AI systems. His work focuses on designing self-optimizing AI architectures and coordination protocols for complex socio-technical environments. He investigates how distributed intelligence can be leveraged to automate organizational processes, enhance collective decision-making and challenge centralized AI paradigms. He is a frequent speaker on AI and Distributed Systems to drive social collaboration and economic practices. He was trained in Machine Learning, Media Studies and Philosophy at Leuphana University, Germany, and the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

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 has experience and expertise working with and advising philanthropy organizations and multi-lateral 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, Los Angeles, USA. 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 an interdisciplinary interpretivist scholar trained in humanistic social sciences and critical technology studies. She is interested in historically examining contemporary technologies with a special focus on majority world phenomena and the enduring legacies of colonialism in information 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 New York University in the past.

Sara Morais dos Santos Bruss is a cultural and media theorist, researcher and curator for scientific, digital and media practices at HKW (Haus der Kulturen der Welt) in Berlin. She holds an MA in Culture, Arts, and Media from the Leuphana University, Lüneburg, Germany. She works on intersections of feminist and anti-colonial art and political practices, digital technologies, and narrations of (human and non-human) subjectivity and relationality. Her first monograph, Feminist Solidarities after Modulation (2023), looks at identity and the body as they are shaped by and inhabit technologies, in a long history of the Deleuzian concept of modulation, which she traces back to the moment of settler colonization.

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 30 October and checkout on 8 November). Single-room availability is very limited; participants who want single rooms should write to us at ISTGlobal2025@creaworld.org

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 Hong Kong (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 Hong Kong 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 750 to CREA
• Contribution Scholarship: CREA covers USD 750, you pay 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.

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

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.

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 on the 21st of October 2025 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.