Research Leadership
My Research leadership position also includes working closely with a large variety of funders. I have extensive experience in connecting with academic and non-academic funders to produce global impact, large-scale research projects that are supported by a multi-stakeholder array of investors. My work has often been to find complementary infrastructure and resources to match available academic resources, and to create the opportunities for inter-disciplinary and cross-sectoral research to emerge.
Since 2009, I have successfully build collaborative research projects around questions of Internet and Society, through multi-stakeholder engagements, and managed and operationalised research funds averaging at 1.2 Million Euros annually. Additionally, Since 2016, as the Member of the Executive Board, at ArtEZ University of the Arts, I have been jointly deciding on research infrastructure and investment, including managing and expanding 2nd and 3rd stream research incomes, leading to a significant growth of 34% in the research income of the Arts University over 4 years.
Research Publications
My research practice has been anchored in a commitment to collaborative work, open access dissemination of knowledge, critical frameworks for multi-disciplinary approaches to the key questions, and establishing new methods and areas for research inquiries to be platformed, especially for centring voices and knowledge from non-canonical geographies and people. Consideration of accessibility and translation of research practices into public discourse and conversations has also been central to my research writing practices. My 10 year-long column in The Indian Express, titled Digital Natives, is an example of engaging with research writing for multiple audiences.
Teaching Philosophy
Teaching has been an integral part of my research practice. My ongoing work involves engaging with students at Bachelors, Masters, and Doctoral levels. Firmly rooted in the idea of ‘safe spaces’ that are strategically unsafe but existentially safe, and inspired by the ‘guide on the side’ models, my classrooms are experimental, immersive, engaged, and collaborative in nature.
Informed by practices and theories of feminist pedagogy and critical making, I am particularly sensitive to the different personal and social structures within which students are placed, and make questions of identity, belonging, and care, the central tenets of teaching.
Career Arc
Dr. Nishant Shah is the Director of Research and Outreach and Professor of Aesthetics and Cultures of Technology at the ArtEZ University of the Arts, The Netherlands. After serving as the Vice President of Research for 4 years, he takes up the new roles where he is responsible for building a research corpus that looks at the role that art and design education and practice can play towards building resilient futures, equitable societies, and critical diversity. His professorship seeks to unpack the current and emerging state of digital technologies through a techno-cultural and techno-aesthetic (AestheTechs) framework to support social change actors. He also regularly teaches at universities, trains professionals, engages in critical research projects and participates as keynote and plenary speaker at conferences around the world.
He was the Co-founder and former Director – Research (2009- 2014) of the non-profit, autonomous research and policy think tank Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India, that works on questions of openness, access to knowledge, digital activism, and inclusion through South-South collaborations. Along with building the research vision and implementing it through various programmatic and projects, he was also responsible for administration, monitoring, evaluation, reporting, and public engagement of the work towards multiple stakeholders in academia, civil society, and governmental organisations.
As a Knowledge Partner, with the Dutch Development Aid Agency, Hivos, (2009-2016) Nishant has initiated and built the Knowledge Programme on ‘Civic Explorations’ that looks at mobilising communities in emerging society towards civic action, intervention, and learning. Through three global projects – Digital AlterNatives with a Cause?, Making Change through Digital Activism, and Critical Digital Humanities and Learning, he has initiated research with change makers, young practitioners of digital technologies, and global south civil organisations towards producing new networks of intervention and education in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South and East Asia. He now serves as a mentor on the Digital Earth Fellowship thinking through questions of digital futures.
He is honored to be Faculty Associate 2020-2021 at the Berkman Klein Centre for Internet & Society, Harvard University and proud to be associated with the Association of Progressive Communication as a mentor on the Feminist Internet Research Network that ambitiously seeks to imagine an Internet informed and shaped by the Feminist Principles of the Internet. He is particularly focused on questions of comparative access and hate speech online.
In his commitment towards Open Knowledge and Critical feminist pedagogies, Nishant has worked closely as advisor and steering committee member with the following groups: The Digital Media and Learning Initiative, at the University of California, Irvine, USA; ‘The Network of Centres for Internet & Society’ housed variously at the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society, Harvard University, Cambridge USA, and the Humboldt Institute for Internet Governance, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany; The ‘Inter Asia Cultural Studies Consortium’ housed at the Song Kong Hae University, Seoul, South Korea; A global distributed online learning initiative for feminist technology studies called FemTechNet; and an affiliate with the Centre for Internet and Human Rights and Tactical Technologies Collective in Berlin, Germany. He also serves as a jury member and advisor to Art Residency collectives like Khoj, New Delhi, India, The Schloss Solitude Akademie, Stuttgart, Germany, and Het Nieuwe Instittuut, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
He consults in his individual capacities with private Internet corporations like Google, Facebook, Yahoo and advices Internet Governance debates representing the issues and questions of the Global South towards building inclusive, participatory, and open societies.
Academic Appointments
2023 – Present: Professor Global Media, Director of Digital Narratives Studio, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
2020 – 2022: Director of Research and Outreach, Professor of Aesthetics and Cultures of Technology, ArtEZ University of the Arts, The Netherlands.
2020 – Present: Faculty Associate 2020-21, Berkman Klein Centre for Internet & Society, Harvard University, USA.
2020 – 2023: Bijzonder Hoogleraar (Professor by Special Appointment), Faculty of Arts, Radboud University, The Netherlands.
2016 – 2020: Member of the Executive Board (CvB lid.) / Dean Graduate School, ArtEZ University of the Arts, The Netherlands.
2014 – 2018: Professor Culture and Aesthetics of Digital Media, Faculty of Media, Communication, and Cultural Studies, Leuphana University, Lueneburg, Germany.
2014 – 2017: Academic Director, Leuphana Digital School, Leuphana University, Lueneburg, Germany.
2012 – 2014: International Tandem Partner, Inkubator for Digitisation, Leuphana University, Lueneburg, Germany.
2009 – 2014: Co-founder and Director-Research, Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore, India.
Professional Appointments
2020 – 2022: Knowledge Partner, Oxfam-Novib, The Netherlands.
2020 – 2022: Research Partner, Point of View, Mumbai, India.
2018 – 2021: Research Mentor, Feminist Internet Research Network, Association of Progressive Communication (APC), Sri Lanka/ UK.
2018 – Present: Academic Advisor, Creating Resources for Empowerment in Action (CREA), USA/India.
2016 – 2018: Senior Research Fellow, Institute for the Advanced Study of Media Cultures of Computer Simulation (MECS), Leuphana University, Germany.
2017 – 2019: Fellow, Centre for Internet & Human Rights, Berlin, Germany.
2016: Visiting Summer Fellow, Mudra Institute of Communication (MICA), Ahmedabad, India.
2015: Scholar in Residence, Indian Institute of Technology, Ahmedabad, India.
2012: Visiting Fellow, Institute of Social Sciences, Erasmus University, The Hague, The Netherlands.
2010 – 2011: Asia Foundation Fellow, Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Shanghai University, China.
2010 – Present: Digital Strategies Advisor, Khoj Studios / Art Think South Asia, India.
2009 – Present Knowledge Partner, Hivos, Social Justice Organisation, The Netherlands.
2005- 2006: Visiting Scholar, Sex Studies Centre, National Central University, Chungli, Taiwan.
Network Affiliations
Radboud Institute for Culture & History,Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Digital Asia Hub, Hong Kong/ Singapore.
Connected Learning Alliance, at the University of California, Irvine, USA.
Network of Centres for Internet & Society initiated at the Berkman-Klein Centre for Internet and Society, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA.
Inter Asia Cultural Studies Consortium, Lingnan University, Hong Kong.
FemTechNet, A global distributed online research network Femtechnet.
Schloss Solitude Akademia, Stuttgart, Germany.
Key (Personal) Research Projects
2020 – 2022: Doing things with stories: Narrative Change and Collective Action. Oxfam, The Netherlands.
2018 – 2020: Digital Earth Fellowship: Imagining a Planetary Sensorium. Hivos, The Netherlands & Swedish International Development Agency, Sweden.
2019 – 2022: Policy Prototyping for Artificial Intelligence. Facebook. In collaboration with Sunil Abraham, Elonnai Hickock.
2019 – 2020: Forces of Art: Between Memory and Storage. Prins Klaus Foundation, European Cultural Foundation, Hivos. In collaboration with Maya Indira Ganesh.
2018- Present: Cyber security for data activists. Microsoft. In collaboration with Sunil Abrhaham
2018 – 2020: Critical digital policy and design practice for Artificial Intelligence.
towards the creation of an endowed professor, Global Partnership in Artificial Intelligence.
2015 – 2018: Making Change: Exploring digital potentials for freedom of speech and expression for change makers in the Global South. Leuphana University Digital Incubator funds, Hivos.
2010 – 2013: Digital Natives with a Cause. Hivos, IDRC.
2009 – 2015: Histories of the Internets in India. Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore, India. Kusuma Trust, IDRC, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundation
Selected Public Engagements 2014 -2025
(Including Keynotes, workshops, presentations, lectures)
From Promise to Mandate: The Making of Digital Authoritarianism. Keynote Lecture at the Johannes-Gutenberg Universitat, Mainz, 2025.
Philanthropy in the Face of AI. Instituto Beja, Filantropando, Sao Paolo, 2025.
Narrative as Care, Confluence, by Puentes & Iris, Bogota, 2024.
It is not fake if it fools you – 3 theses on unsticking fakeness, Keynote lecture at the Nürnberg Digital Festival, 2020.
The Quantified Future was Always Scarce: Constant Catastrophization and Computational Culture, Keynote lecture for the Transformation series at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Germany. 2020.
Intimacy and its (technological) discontents: 3 theses while social distancing – Opening Keynote for the Art Meets Radical Openness festival, Austria. 2020.
Not At Home, Online keynote lecture for the Asia Digital Hub, Hong Kong/ Singapore. 2020.
Designing for Survival – How postcolonial feminism will save the world – keynote and workshop as the WTMC Spring School, The Netherlands. 2019.
The Hollow Promise of Inclusion: Towards a Manifesto of Care, Keynote lecture at the HLSC Conference on ‘Is Europe Inclusive?’ at Radboud University, The Netherlands. 2019.
Who are we when we speak to machines? – Keynote for the Digital Earth: Aesthetic Warfare workshop at Khoj Artist Collaboratory, India. 2019.
Disinformation Overload: ‘Truthing it’ in Algorithmic Networks, performance lecture at Hong Kong Arts Centre, Hong Kong. 2019.
The future of living materials – Input talk – Dutch Design Week, Eindhoven. #Infrastructure of Digital Cultures 2019.
Living in Unpopulated Spaces: human futures of digital cities. Lecture at the Nuremberg Digital Festival, and at CUHK, Hong Kong 2018.
Algorithmic Governance – UC Irvine, SOAS London, Lingnan University, Hong Kong. 2018.
Keynote Lecture at Madeira Institute of Technology, in ‘progressive products for social europe’ Designing technologies for survival: Touchstones for the digital future. Madeira, Portugal. 2018.
Keynote speaker. 1st Istanbul Privacy symposium: Data Protection and Innovation, Istanbul, 2018.
Keynote lecture at the Innovation Diversity and the Digital Turn symposium on The Innovation Blackbox: Technologies, Temporalities, and Topographies at the University of Oslo 2018.
Keynote speaker at Webstock 2018, NewZealand,
Keynote speaker at the TransEuropa Festival 2018, Germany.
Plenary lecture at the Collaborative for the Critical Study of Technology, UIUC, USA 2017.
Keynote hosting and moderation at Transmediale 2018, HKW, Call out, Protest, Speak Back with Lisa Nakamura.
Performance conversation with Maya Indira Ganesh: Data Discrimination, Dystopia, and the Future of Citizenship – Dangerous Conjunctures. 2018. HKW, Berlin.
Democracy Under Siege: Digital Espionage and Civil Society Resistance – Spui25, Datactive, University of Amsterdam 2018.
Keynote speaker at the Transmediale Berlin 2013, 2016, 2018.
Keynote speaker – Inclusion in the age of AI – at the Global Symposium for Artificial Intelligence and Ethics, Networks of Centre for Internet & Society, Brazil. 2017.
Keynote speaker in Design Dialogue Series, at the National Centre for Supercomputing Applications , University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, USA, 2017.
Head to Head conversation with Wendy Chun, “network science, segregation, and the emergence of political extremes’, American Academy of Berlin 2017.
Keynote Lecture titled ‘The object of our Affection: Pornography, Perversion, and Pleasure’ at the ‘Did you feel it?’ Symposium, Designhuis, Eindhoven 2015.
Workshop on Social and Cultural Dimensions of Hinglish at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, 2015.
Plenary speaker at the Theatre & the Net conference by the Heinrich Boele Institute Berlin, 2015.
Expert inputs at The Biometrics Conference London, 2014.
Performance Lecture titled ‘To share is to s©are: networks of Reuptation and machines of Repetition’ Academy of Asociality Graz, Austria, 2014.
Expert talk on ‘Cracking the code: Learning how to as the question again’ at Code Acts in Education seminar at Stirling University Stirling, 2014.
Expert talk on ‘Between the Local and the Global: Notes Towards thinking of the nature of Internet Policy’ at the Milton Wolf Seminar on Media and Diplomacy, focused on ‘The Third Man Theme Revisited: Foreign Policies of the Internet In a Time of Surveillance and Disclosure’ , Vienna, Austria, 2014.
Advisor and keynote speaker at the Digitally Connected Symposium, Berkman Centre for Internet & Society, Harvard University, Cambridge, 2014.
Expert input at the workshop on Big Data and Positive Change in the Developing world, organized by the Oxford Internet Institute, at the Rockefeller Bellagio Centre, Italy, 2014.
Capacity Development and Consultations (Selected)
Cutting Through the Noise – Capacity Building for Arts and Cultural Managers in the face of digitalization, Goethe Institute, Mumbai, India. 2020.
Digital Capacity Development Partner, for the city of Nurenburg’s bid to be the European Cultural Capital 2025: Past Forward. 2020.
Digital Fellowships Jury Member The sole jury member for the Digital Fellowships at Schloss Solitude Akademie, Stuttgart, Germany – Global digital artists and practitioners 2017, 2019.
Truthing It: Transition and transformative narratives in the age of information overload (2018), Training session Disinformation and Discourse: Rebuilding Trust in Institutions, Platforms, and Civic Spaces summer Institute, Jakarta, Indonesia by Digital Asia Hub, Hong Kong– Asian News media practitioners, content creators, media curators, editors.
Digital Narration in a post-truth milieu, A performance lecture in ‘The way your blue light lights my face in the dark’ by the Forum – Schlossplatz, Aarau, Switzerland – Artists, curators, museum visitors. 2018.
Aesthetic Warfare Workshop at Human Rights Funders Networks, Mexico City, Mexico – Global Human Rights programmers, policy actors, activists, and artists. 2018.
Algorithms for Survival: Feminist Touchstones for the future workshop at Algorithmic Anxieties Design and Research Bootcamp, organized by NXS, Amsterdam at The Grey Space in the Middle, Den Haag, The Netherlands – Global Artists, designers and new media practitioners. 2018.
Who are we when we speak to machines? Feminist protocols for the future, Lecture and workshop at the ‘Me, We, and the Machine Institute for Technology, Gender, Sexuality, and Rights’ organized by CREA (U.S.A.) and POV (India) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands – Global Gender and Sexuality practitioners, activists, and policy actors. 2018.
Technologies of Survival, A 2-session reading group and discussion workshop as a part of the The Reading Room, Den Haag – Technology practitioners, artists, creators, and professionals. 2017.
Making Change: Future of Citizen Action. Conducted 2, seven day workshops and maker sprints with 50 civil society organisations and activists in Asia and Latin America, in Bangalore (India) and Bogota (Colombia) – Civil Society representatives, activists, academics, artists, change makers in Latin America, and South and East Asia. 2014-15.
The Digital and the Viral’ & ‘Beyond the Memetic’ Art Think South Asia summer institute, Goethe Institute and British Council, New Delhi, India – Art Managers, curators, policy makers, artists, and creative professionals from South Asia. 2012, 2013, 2015.
Reclaim Open Learning Symposium Judge and panelist for the Digital Media and Learning contest and conference, University of California Humanities Research Institute, Irvine, USA – Global Educators, academics, researchers, and learners. 2013.
Digital Natives with a Cause 3 regional workshops in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, as a part of Hivos Knowledge Programme – Young change actors, activists, institution leaders, movement organisers from the Global South. 2010-11.