India
24–28 February 2025, New Delhi
EXPERTS WORKSHOP
These workshops will examine local representations (or lack thereof) of digital immortality and their relations with local immortality-related traditions. To this end, ten local experts—including academics, artists, palliative care professionals, and entrepreneurs from each country who work at the intersection of death, immortality, and technology—will present their culture’s perspectives on death and immortality in the age of AI, addressing predefined questions. Participants will also be encouraged to collaborate on envisioning desirable futures for AI-driven technologies in the context of death and immortality using speculative design techniques. This part of the research will be held in English.
Minakshi Dewan is an independent researcher and author with a PhD degree in social medicine and community health from Jawaharlal Nehru University and a master’s in social work from TISS Mumbai. She possesses extensive experience in health, food systems, gender, and community mobilization with grassroots and international development organizations. She has contributed chapters in academic publications on tribal health and healing rituals. Her writings have appeared in leading Indian and international publications and address a range of issues, including health, human rights, the environment and culture. The Final Farewell: Understanding the Last Rites and Rituals of India’s Major Faiths, is her debut book with HarperCollins, India. The book has been widely reviewed by Indian publications and international academic journals. Minakshi recently presented the book at the American Anthropological Association’s annual conference, USA, Tampa. She will be presenting her research at the forthcoming Death, Dying and Disposal conference organised by ASDS in Netherlands.
Manisha Sheth is an environmentalist based in Pune. She has a keen interest in the interface between faith and conservation, especially as regards to the ecological crisis and the idea of the anticipated apocalypse. In 2022 she was the primary care giver for her 88 year old mother who decided not to opt for treatment of her ailment. In that one year Manisha and her mother experienced the culmination of life together as they reflected and studied the impending transition. After her mother passed Manisha created a study group in her honour, called 'Dying to Learn’, which offers a safe online space for those who need support with death and dying. The groups has over 50 members and is gradually growing by word of mouth.
Parjanya Sen obtained his PhD in 2021 from the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. He worked under the supervision of Professor Tapati Guha-Thakurta on Buddhist reconfigurations in 19th and early-20th century Bengal, with focus on Tibet and the Himalayan borderlands. He received the Ashok Mitra Award for Best Ph.D. thesis in 2021 from the CSSSC. In 2023, Dr. Sen was selected as one of five global Early-Career Research Fellows by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). He was funded by The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Program in Buddhist Studies for a period of ten months between December, 2023 and September, 2024 to work on his monograph project from his thesis. During the tenure of this Fellowship program, Dr. Sen was affiliated as a Postdoctoral Visiting Scholar at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford. Mentored by Professor Clare E. Harris, during this period, he was working in the various archives in the United Kingdom and is presently in the final stages of writing out his book. Dr. Sen delivered an invited lecture from his work-in-progress monograph at the Department of South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies at the University of Vienna on 18th April, 2024. Between 4th-8th August, Dr. Sen was selected as one of four Fellows by the ACLS for a monograph retreat and workshop at El Colegio De México in México City, and is now being mentored by Prof. Donald Lopez, Jr., University of Michigan, for his book. Dr. Sen has also published an edited volume “Death and Dying in Northeast India: Indigeneity and Afterlife” from Routledge, UK in 2023. He gave an invited plenary lecture in May, 2023 at the University of Tartu, Estonia from his edited book. Dr. Sen has also given several talks across colleges and universities in India and abroad. He is presently working as Assistant Professor in English at Deshbandhu College for Girls, Kolkata and is the Director of a 2-year ICSSR Major Research Project on Buddhist sacred sites in the Western Himalayan regions of Spiti, Lahaul and Kinnaur and the monastic cult of Lotsāwa Rin-chen bzang-po.
Debayan Gupta is currently an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Ashoka University, where he teaches a course on security and privacy as well as an introductory programming class. He is also a visiting professor and research affiliate at MIT and MIT-Sloan. Before coming to Ashoka, Debayan held an Extraordinary Faculty position in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, where he taught courses like 6.042, 6.006, and 6.046. He has a PhD from Yale and a bachelor’s degree from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata. Debayan’s primary areas of interest include secure computation, cryptography, and privacy. He also occasionally dabbles in number theory, complexity theory, robotics, and machine learning (and, on rare occasions, economics). He has helped start a number of companies in India and abroad, and as such, holds board positions in a number of start-ups. He also consults for and advises companies on cybersecurity, helping c-suite individuals understand and mitigate cyber-risk.
Cyril Joseph: As the Funeral Director at JCJ Funerals, we are dedicated to helping families navigate one of life’s most challenging moments. We are committed to easing the burden for mourning families by providing dignified and personalized funeral, cremation, and global repatriation services. With a deep understanding of cultural sensitivities and the emotional needs of grieving families, we ensure that every service is conducted with the utmost respect, care, and professionalism. Under my leadership, JCJ Funerals has earned a reputation for excellence, offering comprehensive support from coordinating with embassies and local authorities to managing all logistical arrangements. Our vision is simple yet powerful – to bring comfort and peace of mind to families by handling all the intricate details, allowing them to focus on honoring their loved ones. Our empathetic approach, combined with our expertise in the funeral industry, has made us a trusted name in the community. Driven by a commitment to service and compassion, we continue to lead JCJ Funerals with integrity, ensuring that every farewell is meaningful and memorable.
Krittika Sharma is the Creative Director & Founder of Maajhi, which humanizes loss, grief & death. She is passionate about ensuring that people have agency, dignity, information & the right to die well—on their own terms, with the grace they deserve. Maajhi turned 10 this year, is the first of its kind in India & is growing globally. Maajhi creates experiences & tools to empower people (individuals, collectives & organizations) to prepare for the end of life in meaningful ways. Krittika has 15 years of experience in research, behavior design & creative strategy. She has designed for wellbeing across multiple sectors. The interest & urgency to work in the end-of-life care space came after being profoundly impacted by a personal incident, & she is deeply passionate about bringing dignity & wellbeing into the world of end-of-life care & the larger healthcare ecosystem. She is the former director of Death Over Dinner (India)—the largest social campaign in the world, with over 200,000 dinners. She introduced the concept in India. She was a core team member who conceived, built & launched the first global End of Life (EOL) Collective—a digital platform for caregivers, care seekers & service providers. She has partnered with Karunashraya, an award-winning hospice in India, for their annual education program for psycho-oncologists. The course has received endorsement from the International Psycho-Oncology Society. These collaborations have also expanded into additional research & innovative multidisciplinary approaches that bring medicine, experience & participatory design together. Krittika’s Death Meditation experience has been incorporated into corporate spaces by clients like Pfizer & Merck to enhance employee wellbeing, value-based & intentional work environments. Krittika has presented her work on global platforms & has authored a chapter on wellbeing in death & dying in the Handbook of Happiness, commissioned by the Happiness Monk of Bhutan. She is currently a member of The Dying. Series Collective, Toronto (a part of DesignTO). Krittika was introduced to the world of applied behavioral economics & sciences infused with design thinking & research during her time at FinalMile. Her portfolio expanded into healthcare, financial services, the social sector & organizational behavior across India, the US, Canada, the UK, France & Tanzania. Her expertise continues on this path today, driving progress for Fortune 250 companies, primarily in the space of Health & Life Sciences (HLS), with scaled solutions using AI, analytics & engineering. While her primary role was as a behavior design leader & mentor in the Experience team, she was a core team member in HLS at Fractal Analytics, responsible for developing the practice from its early days to one of the most thriving verticals in the company.
Ravi Nandan Singh is a sociologist based at Shiv Nadar University. His research work centres on funerals, cremation cultures and materiality of remains. He is the author of “Dead in Banaras: Ethnography of funeral travelling”.
Yeshwanth Sonnathi
Senthil Nayagam is the Founder of Muonium AI Studios, a pioneering Generative AI startup specializing in Media Tech. He is at the forefront of revolutionizing filmmaking through AI-driven innovations, blending technology with storytelling to reshape the entertainment industry. His latest groundbreaking venture, AI Production No. 1, marks a historic milestone: the world’s first full-length Tamil feature film created entirely using Generative AI. This project redefines the boundaries of cinema, harnessing AI for storytelling, visual effects, and production, setting a precedent for the future of filmmaking. Under Senthil’s leadership, Muonium AI Studios has been a trailblazer in India’s Generative AI landscape. Since its first viral success in July 2023, the studio has demonstrated expertise in Deepfakes, Voice Cloning, AI Dubbing, Digital Resurrection, and Animated Ads—technologies that are reshaping media and entertainment. A visionary in AI-powered content creation, Senthil Nayagam continues to push the limits of what’s possible in cinema and digital media. His work is not just about innovation but about making high-quality, AI-generated storytelling accessible to wider audiences.
Nikhil Varghese is a distinguished Chartered Accountant with over 17 years of experience in estate planning, taxation, and mergers and acquisitions. Throughout his career, he has held pivotal roles at esteemed firms such as PwC and Ernst & Young, where he specialized in providing comprehensive solutions to clients in these domains. In his tenure as the South India Regional Head for Estate Planning at IIFL Wealth, Nikhil advised high-net-worth individuals (HNIs), non-resident Indians (NRIs), ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNIs), family offices, and businesses. His expertise was instrumental in safeguarding assets exceeding $5 billion for Indian families, ensuring their wealth is protected and will be seamlessly transitioned across generations. Currently, as the Co-founder and Chief Domain Officer at Yellow, Nikhil is dedicated to building a team of estate planning experts to provide users with top-tier support, complementing the company’s innovative technology platform. His responsibilities also encompass strategic planning and financial oversight, driving Yellow’s mission to revolutionize estate planning services. Nikhil’s understanding of complex financial landscapes, combined with his commitment to client-centric solutions, has established him as a trusted advisor in the field. His efforts continue to empower clients to navigate the intricacies of wealth structuring with confidence and clarity.
Sudeep Sudhakaran is a legal researcher, consultant, and assistant professor of law specialising in technology, law, and policy. He holds a BBA-LLB and an LLM in Law and Development. His work focuses on the intersection of digital platforms, regulation, and workers’ rights, examining the legal and ethical implications of emerging technologies. With experience in academia, legal consulting, and NGO work, he has taught international law, labour law, and human rights. He also creates digital content to raise awareness of policy issues. His work bridges research and practice in evolving regulatory landscapes.
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Katarzyna Nowaczyk - Basińska
Principal Investigator
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Stephen Cave
Experts Workshop Moderator
Stephen Cave is Academic Director of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence and Co-Director of the Institute for Technology and Humanity, both at the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on philosophy and ethics of technology, particularly AI, robotics and life-extension. He is the author of Immortality (Crown, 2012), a New Scientist book of the year, and Should You Choose To Live Forever: A Debate (with John Martin Fischer, Routledge, 2023); and co-editor of AI Narratives (OUP, 2020), Feminist AI (OUP, 2023) and Imagining AI (OUP, 2023). He writes widely about philosophy, technology and society, including for the Guardian and Atlantic. He also advises governments around the world, and has served as a British diplomat.
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Tomasz Hollanek
Experts Workshop Moderator
Tomasz Hollanek is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (LCFI) and an Affiliated Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science and Technology at the University of Cambridge, working at the intersection of AI ethics and critical design.
His ongoing research explores the possibility of applying critical design methods – prioritising the goals of social justice and environmental sustainability – in the governance, development, and deployment of AI systems. This includes work on the ethics of human-AI interaction design (in particular, the design of companion chatbots and griefbots) and the In-depth EU AI Act Toolkit, helping developers translate the requirements of the European Union’s AI Act into design practice. At LCFI, he also leads the research stream dedicated to AI, Journalism, and Communications.
Previously, Tomasz was a Vice-Chancellor’s PhD Scholar at Cambridge and a Visiting Research Fellow at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He has contributed to numerous research projects, including the Global AI Narratives Project at LCFI and the Ethics of Digitalization research program at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard.
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Saide Mobayed Vega
Research Assistant
Saide Mobayed Vega will contribute to the ‘Imaginaries of Immortality in the Age of AI: An Intercultural Analysis’ project at the CFI. She is a sociologist focusing on STS, digital sociology, critical data studies, human rights, and gender-based violence. Saide is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge, where she investigates how feminicide—the gender-related killing of women and girls—becomes translated into numerical data from global data sets to local data stories.
Saide has extensive experience in academic, interdisciplinary, and cross-cultural work. She has co-organised numerous international conferences and workshops, including the Big Data & Society 2023 Colloquium: ‘Data Practices and Digital Social Worlds’ and the ‘Crossing Data: Building Bridges with Activist and Academic Practices from and for Latin America’ for CHI in 2022. Saide co-edited The Routledge International Handbook on Femicide and Feminicide, a collection of 50 chapters that offers an in-depth global examination of femicide and feminicide from various perspectives and disciplines.
Saide has been actively involved in public engagement. In 2017, she co-founded the ongoing ‘Femi(ni)cide Watch Platform’, with the UN Studies Association. From 2021-2022, she served as president of the Cambridge University Mexican Society. Before Cambridge, Saide collaborated with international and non-governmental organisations on human rights and gender-based violence projects, including UNODC and ARTICLE19.
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Anja Franczak
Focus Groups Moderator
Educator in the field of dying, death and grief. Founder of the Institute of the Good Death, an innovative and awarded social movement in Poland. Anja supports people in the final stages of life, people grieving the loss of a loved one, and those who work with them in hospitals, hospices and funeral homes. She also is a ritual celebrant, creating and leading personal farewell rituals and funeral ceremonies. Trained in Heidelberg at the Institute for Clinical Pastoral Care (Institut für Klinische Seelsorgeausbildung) as a professional grief counsellor certified by the Federal Association of Bereavement Counselling in Germany (Bundesverband Trauerbegleitung e.V.). As an end-of-life doula and certified instructor of the international initiative Last Aid Courses (Letzte Hilfe), she educates about the dying process and supports families who are caring for a loved one approaching the end of life.
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Tomasz Siuda
Photographer / Artist
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Debayan Gupta
Debayan Gupta is currently an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Ashoka University, where he teaches a course on security and privacy as well as an introductory programming class. He is also a visiting professor and research affiliate at MIT and MIT-Sloan.
Before coming to Ashoka, Debayan held an Extraordinary Faculty position in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, where he taught courses like 6.042, 6.006, and 6.046. He has a PhD from Yale and a bachelor’s degree from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata.
Debayan’s primary areas of interest include secure computation, cryptography, and privacy. He also occasionally dabbles in number theory, complexity theory, robotics, and machine learning (and, on rare occasions, economics). He has helped start a number of companies in India and abroad, and as such, holds board positions in a number of start-ups. He also consults for and advises companies on cybersecurity, helping c-suite individuals understand and mitigate cyber-risk.
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Daniel Weltman
Daniel Weltman is an associate professor in the Philosophy department at Ashoka University. He works on social and political philosophy, ethics, and gender.
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Ayush Sharma
Ayush Sharma is an undergraduate student in Computer Science and Philosophy at Ashoka University, Class of 2026. His research and academic interests are computational logic, high-order logic, philosophy of language, metaphysics and theology. Feel free to contact me: ayush.sharma_ug25@ashoka.edu.in)
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Aalok Thakkar
Aalok Thakkar is an assistant professor in the department of Computer Science at Ashoka University. He specializes in the areas of programming languages, formal methods, and artificial intelligence. His recent research focuses on generating correct programs from user-provided specification of program behavior, as well as understanding the limitations of computing and AI.
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Maya Indira Ganesh
Maya Indira Ganesh is Associate Director (Research Partnerships), co-director of the Narratives and Justice Program, and a Senior Research Fellow at CFI. From October 2021- July 2024 she was an assistant teaching professor at the Institute of Continuing Education (ICE) where she co-directed the MSt in AI Ethics and Society run jointly between ICE and LCFI.
Maya has a Drphil in Cultural Studies from Leuphana University, Lüneburg, Germany. Her doctoral work took the case of the ‘ethics of autonomous driving’ to study the implications of ethical decision-making and governance by algorithmic/AI technologies for human social relations, and argued for a conception of AI technologies as situated in distinct infrastructural and social environments. Her monograph, Auto-Correct: The Fantasies and Failures of AI, Ethics, and the Driverless Car is available for pre-order here and the introductory chapter is free to read here. Maya’s research at CFI builds on this by focusing on AI in public and with different kinds of publics in the design and development of technology. She draws on varied theoretical and methodological genres, including feminist scholarship, media studies, and Science and Technology Studies. She is also an invited speaker, curatorial advisor, and writer with arts and cultural organisations in Europe, and on the internet. Prior to academia, Maya spent over a decade as a researcher and activist working at the intersection of gender justice, security, and digital freedom of expression. An up-to-date list of publications, talks, and cultural practice can be found here.
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Kranti Saran
Kranti Saran is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Ashoka University. He earned his doctorate at Harvard University’s Department of Philosophy in 2011, and has since been a Fellow in Philosophy at Harvard and a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Philosophy, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Most recently, he has been an Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department at the University of Delhi. You can find more information about him at http://krantisaran.net/.
His research interests span the areas of perception, attention, bodily awareness, introspection, mimicry, and how these topics are related to our moral relation to others. A common thread that runs through his research is a concern with understanding facets of our cognition: its faculties and modes (perception, attention), its embodiment (bodily awareness), its consequences for our relation to our selves and our immediate social milieu (introspection, mimicry), and finally, the manner in which these topics interact with culture and so either constrain or enable dimensions of our moral relation to others.
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Bing Song
Senior Vice President, Berggruen Institute; Director, Berggruen Institute China Center
Prior to joining the Berggruen Institute, she was a senior executive with Goldman Sachs China for over a decade, and prior to Goldman, an experienced capital markets lawyer for many years. Earlier in her career, she undertook academic and policy research and published in the areas of administrative law, competition law, and comparative procedural laws.
Recently, she co-edited Gongsheng Across Contexts – A Philosophy of Co-becoming, which explores philosophical foundation of gongsheng , a conception of the world as consisting of mutually embedded, co-existent and co-becoming entities. Her edited volume Wisdom and Intelligence – Artificial Intelligence Meets Chinese Philosophers, published in 2021, marked the first systematic endeavor by prominent Chinese philosophers to address challenges and opportunities posed by frontier technologies such as artificial intelligence and robotics. In addition, Bing leads other projects of the China Center, which explore the intersection of frontier sciences and technologies, and Chinese philosophy.
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Xiaojiao Li
Chief Operations Officer, China Center
Xiaojiao Li is the Chief Operations Officer for Berggruen China Center, where she oversees the Center’s communications strategies, media engagement plans, and she develops and manages the Center’s engagement with key partners. She manages the team’s day-to-day operations. Xiaojiao joined the China Center as the Chief Operations Officer in 2018. Prior to joining the Center, Xiaojiao worked as the Senior Public Affairs Officer (Media Relations) at the Australian Embassy in Beijing, the Program Officer at the Confucius Institute at the University of Adelaide, and the Events Coordinator at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy. Xiaojiao holds a master’s degree in cross-cultural communications from Shandong University and a Bachelor degree in media from Zhejiang University.
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Jian Ma
Research and Program Coordinator, Berggruen Institute China Center
Jian earned his PhD in Philosophy from Tsinghua University,
specializing in Contemporary Analytic Philosophy. Prior to that, he
worked as an editor at the Post Wave Publishing. He has published a number of articles and reviews in Chinese and English, and he has translated and published works of Daniel Dennett, Charles Travis, Thomas Metzinger and others from English into Chinese.
Jian is responsible for project research and management. He also manages Cui Ling Magazine as well as other publications at the Berggruen China Center.
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Hannah Tigg
Research Grants Co-ordinator
Hannah is a Research Grants Co-ordinator at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI) and is responsible for the administration of Centre’s grants across their full life cycle. This includes financial management, reporting, and supporting colleagues in applying for funding across a range of sponsors. She also works closely with the Centre Administrator, Director, and researchers to ensure the smooth day-to-day running of the Centre.
She has worked in a similar role at the Centre for Family Research at the University since 2017. She became a Chartered Accountant in 2000 and worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers from 1996 to 2005, taking a career break to raise her family before starting work at the University of Cambridge.
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Hang Vu
Finance Co-ordinator
Hang joined the Institute for Technology and Humanity (ITH) in June 2024. The Institute is home to the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER), the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI) and the Centre for Human-inspired AI (CHIA).
Reporting to the Institute Manager, she is responsible for the day-to-day operation of all aspects of the accounting and financial procedures for the Institute including, but not limited to, managing accounts payable, accounts receivable, and procurement, raising and responding to financial queries from stakeholders, completing month/year-end processes, monitoring expenditure on budgets, reporting on research grants and undertaking other such duties.
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Rachel Burgess
Institute Manager (ITH)
Rachel oversees administration of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI) programmes and projects. Her areas of responsibility include research management, finances, human resource management, governance and planning, IT, and communications.
Before joining CFI, Rachel worked in several roles across the School of Arts and Humanities including REF Impact Administrator, Graduate Administrator, and Project Administrator for three very different interdisciplinary research projects.
Rachel originally trained as a Management Accountant and worked in local manufacturing companies developing business strategy. She has a degree in French and Italian from the University of Leicester.
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Yiyun Mu
Administrative Assistant
Yiyun is working closely with the Centre Administrators, Director, and researchers to ensure the smooth day-to-day running of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI). She is the PA to the Centre Director Stephen Cave.
Yiyun completed an LLM in International Business Law degree at Anglia Ruskin University before settling in the UK. She has worked in the University of Cambridge since 2019 as the Administrative Assistant at the Cambridge Graphene Centre.