Biography
Payal Arora is a Full Professor and Chair in Technology, Values, and Global Media Cultures and an Academic Director in UX and Inclusive Design at the Erasmus Centre for Data Analytics, Erasmus University Rotterdam. She is the co-founder of FemLab, a feminist future of work initiative. Her expertise lies in cross-cultural values, inequality, and inclusive design, with a focus on the Global South. Trained in digital anthropology, she comes with two decades of fieldwork experience in unpacking how youth in resource-constrained contexts make sense of new digital tools in their everyday lives and how these insights can shape the design of responsible and equitable systems. Her research has been supported by funding organizations such as Horizon Europe (EUR PI on innovative ethnographic approaches to machine learning using synthetic datasets to reduce bias in AI recruitment tools in Europe), International Development Research Centre (Co-PI for how women workers in India, and Bangladesh learn to use gig platforms to connect, collectivize, and communicate), UNHCR (PI on how Venezuelan refugees in Brazil learn to become content creators and foster new livelihoods), various global design companies. (PI on how Gen Z in India learns to use metrics to create content and build followers for visibility and potential monetization). She is the author of award-winning books including the “Leisure Commons” (Routledge/ EUR fellowship award), and the latest “The Next Billion Users” with Harvard Press (2019 PROSE award Winner). Engadget stated that her Harvard book is one of “the most interesting, thought-provoking books on science and technology we can find.” Forbes named her the “next billion champion” and “the right kind of person to reform tech.” Several international media outlets have covered her work including the BBC, Financial Times, The Economist, Quartz, Tech Crunch, NRC, The Boston Globe, F.A.Z, The Nation and CBC. She engages on tech innovation and equity design with diverse organizations such as Adobe, Spotify, Google, UNESCO, KPMG, GE, UNHCR, and HP. She has given more than 300+ talks in 115 cities in 67 countries including TEDx talks on the future of the internet and frugal innovation. She sits on several boards such as Columbia University’s Earth Institute, World Women Global Council in New York, and the ICRIER Prosus Centre for Internet and Digital Economy. She has held Fellow positions at Bellagio Rockefeller, GE, ZEMKI, ITSRio, MICA, and NYU. She got her Masters at Harvard University in International Policy and her Doctorate at Columbia University in Language, Literacy and Technology.
[Catalyst Lab]: http://www.catalyst-lab.org/ [TEDx talk on the future of the internet.]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiQa78tgbMk&t=105s [University Education Prize in 2017.]: https://www.facebook.com/ErasmusUniversity/videos/1581059295249288/ [Erasmus Magazine]: https://www.erasmusmagazine.nl/en/persons/payal-arora/
Erasmus School of Philosophy
- arora@esphil.eur.nl
- Location
- Burg. Oudlaan 50, Rotterdam
More information
Work
- Renate Baumgartner, Payal Arora, Corinna Bath, Darja Burljaev, Kinga Ciereszko, Bart Custers, Jin Ding, Waltraud Ernst, Eduard Fosch-Villaronga, Vassilis Galanos, Thomas Gremsl, Tereza Hendl, Cordula Kropp, Christian Lenk, Paul Martin, Somto Mbelu, Sara Morais dos Santos Bruss, Karolina Napiwodzka, Ewa Nowak, Tiara Roxanne, Silja Samerski, David Schneeberger, Karolin Tampe-Mai, Katerina Vlantoni, Kevin Wiggert & Robin Williams (2023) - Fair and equitable AI in biomedical research and healthcare: Social science perspectives - Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, 144 - doi: 10.1016/j.artmed.2023.102658 - [link]
- Chinar Mehta, Payal Arora & Usha Raman (2023) - A Feminist Human–machine Communication Framework:: Collectivizing by Design for Inclusive Work Futures - [link]
- Daniela Jaramillo Dent, , Payal Arora, Amanda Paz Alencar, & (2023) - Digital Leisure and Aspirational Work among Venezuelan Refugee and Migrant Women in Brazil.
- Pallavi Bansal & Payal Arora (2023) - Feminist Approaches to Location-Based Labour Platforms in India. - doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-11462-5_7
- Chinar Mehta, Usha Raman & Payal Arora (2023) - Digitalisation and Transformations of Women’s Labour in Sanitation Work - [link]
- Payal Arora, Amanda Paz Alencar, Daniela Jaramillo Dent, John Warnes & Erika Perez-Iglesias (2023) - The Digital Leisure Divide and the Forcibly Displaced Part II: Field Research - [link]
- Kiran Vinod Bhatia, Manisha Pathak-Shelat & Payal Arora (2023) - DIY education in the digital era: youth-driven learning strategies and curricula for the future of work opportunities - Education and Information Technologies - doi: 10.1007/s10639-023-11750-4 - [link]
- Sai Amulya Komarraju, Payal Arora & Usha Raman (2022) - Agency and servitude in platform labour: a feminist analysis of blended cultures - Media, Culture and Society, 44 (4), 672-689 - doi: 10.1177/01634437211029890 - [link]
- Payal Arora, Amanda Paz Alencar, Daniela Jaramillo Dent, John Warnes & Erika Perez-Iglesias (2022) - The Digital Leisure Divide and Forcibly Displaced
- Payal Arora, Amanda Paz Alencar, Daniela Jaramillo Dent, John Warnes & Erika Perez-Iglesias (2022) - The Digital Leisure Divide and the Forcibly Displaced - [link]
- Kiran Vinod Bhatia & Payal Arora (2022) - Discursive Toolkits of Anti-Muslim Disinformation on Twitter - International Journal of Press/Politics - doi: 10.1177/19401612221084633
- Payal Arora & Usha Raman (2022) - Fair Work, Feminist Design, and Women’s Labor Collectives - doi: 10.7551/mitpress/13835.003.0024
- Jesse Fox, Katy E. Pearce, Adrienne L. Massanari, Julius Matthew Riles, Łukasz Szulc, Yerina S. Ranjit, Filippo Trevisan, Cheryll Ruth R. Soriano, Jessica Vitak, Payal Arora, Sun Joo Ahn, Meryl Alper, Andrew Gambino, Carmen Gonzalez, Teresa Lynch, Lillie D. Williamson & Amy L. Gonzales (2021) - Open Science, Closed Doors?: Countering Marginalization through an Agenda for Ethical, Inclusive Research in Communication - Journal of Communication, 71 (5), 764-784 - doi: 10.1093/joc/jqab029 - [link]
- Payal Arora (2021) - Cross-Cultural Feminist Technologies - Global Perspectives, 2 (1) - doi: 10.1525/gp.2021.25207
- Kiran Vinod Bhatia, Payal Arora & Manisha Pathak-Shelat (2021) - Good Girls Don’t Go Online: Unpacking the Quotidian Playful Resilience Influencing Girls’ Social and Digital Engagements - International Journal of Communication, 15 - [link]
- Payal Arora (2020) - All Gloom and Global Doom?: Provocations on the Future of Global Media Theory - Global Perspectives, 1 (1) - doi: 10.1525/001c.11653 - [link]
- Helmut K. Anheier, Payal Arora, Thomas Biersteker, Miguel A. Centeno, Sara Curran, Dirk Messner, Hagen Schulz-Forberg & J. P. Singh (2020) - Introducing Global Perspectives: An Editorial Essay - Global Perspectives, 1 (1) - doi: 10.1525/001c.11777 - [link]
- Natasha Rusch & Payal Arora (2020) - AI-BASED STRATEGIES TO COMBAT WILDLIFE TRAFFICKING AND WET MARKETS IN ASIA: A CRITICAL REVIEW
- Payal Arora (2019) - Keynote at the annual public Techfestival with Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia) and Chris Messina (founder of the hashtag), Sponsored by Copenhagen Municipality.
- P (Payal) Arora, A (Amanda) Paz Alencar & DM (Daniela) Jaramillo Dent (28 September 2021) - Breaking the cycle of ignorance: Prioritising refugees’ digital leisure and entertainment
- Payal Arora (1 January 2019) - Book talk on 'Do the next billion users need more innovation? Rethinking automation for the common good,' Sponsored by United Nations University Institute on Computing and Society.
- Payal Arora (1 January 2019) - Book talk on ‘The next billion users,’ at the ‘Nose in the Books’ bookstore, Sponsored by School of Journalism and Communication, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
- Payal Arora (1 January 2019) - Book talk on ‘The next billion users,’ at the ACO bookstore, Sponsored by School of Journalism and Communication, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
- Payal Arora (1 January 2019) - Book talk on ‘The next billion users,’ Sponsored by Global Asia research center, National Taiwan University.
- Payal Arora (1 January 2019) - Book talk on disruptive innovation, Sponsored by Nanjang Technological University.
- Payal Arora (1 January 2019) - Interview with The Hard Copy and Obvious Design Studio on The Fabulous Next Billion
- Payal Arora (1 January 2019) - Interview with The Hindu on Traversing in an Emerging Field
- Payal Arora (1 January 2019) - Interview with The Telegraph on the Next Billion and the rise of Irrational Design
- Payal Arora (1 January 2019) - Interview on DW Akademie on Media Development at Bonn.
- Payal Arora (2019) - Keynote on ‘Decolonizing privacy studies’
- Payal Arora (2019) - Keynote on “The next billion users”
- Payal Arora (2019) - Keynote at the Rethinking media development: New actors, new technologies and new strategies FoME Symposium 2019
- Payal Arora (2019) - Speaker on ‘The next billion,’ Sponsored by Department of Media & Communication Studies, Södertörn University.
- Payal Arora (2019) - fake news’ in the Asian context
- Payal Arora (2019) - Above the law and below poverty: Digital activism and online publicity in the Global South
- Payal Arora (2019) - Keynote
- Payal Arora (2019) - Blue Sky Workshop: Global Perspectives: Rethinking boundaries in the Platformization era
- Payal Arora (2019) - Oromo activism through Facebook and twitter
- Payal Arora (2019) - Behind the Music: How labor changed for musicians through the Subscription Economy