SPEAKERS | Brave New World

MEET OF OUR PREVIOUS SPEAKERS

SUMIT PAUL-CHOUDHURY

WRITER, TECHNOLOGIST

Sumit Paul-Choudhury writes, thinks, and dreams about science, technology, and the future. A former Editor-in-Chief of New Scientist, he trained as an astrophysicist, has worked as a financial journalist, and, at the London Business School, received a Sloan Fellowship in strategy and leadership. Currently, he devotes most of his time to his creative studio Alternity, which puts the ideas in this book into scientific and artistic practice. His latest book, The Bright Side: Why Optimists Have the Power to Change the World, explores how optimism can drive meaningful change.

PAYAL ARORA

PROF. INCLUSIVE AI CULTURES

Payal Arora is a Professor of Inclusive AI Cultures at Utrecht University and co-founder of Inclusive AI Lab, a Global South driven tech initiative and FemLab, a feminist futures of work initiative. She is a leading digital anthropologist with two decades of user experiences in the Global South to help shape inclusive AI enabled designs and policies. Payal is the author of 100+ journal articles and award-winning books including “The Next Billion Users” with Harvard Press. Forbes named her the ‘next billion champion’ and the ‘right kind of person to reform tech.’ She has been listed in the 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics 2025 and won the 2025 Women in AI Benelux Award for her work on Diversifying AI. Her new book with MIT Press “From Pessimism to Promise: Lessons from the Global South on Designing Inclusive Tech” has been longlisted for the 2024 Porchlight Business Book Awards and the Silver Medalist for the 2025 Axiom Book Award under the Emerging Tech/AI category.

HAROON SHEIKH

PHILOSOPHER

Haroon Sheikh is a Dutch philosopher with Pakistani and Surinamese roots. He conducts multidisciplinary research on issues relating to international order and new technologies. His work is characterized by a broad orientation on different fields and schools of thought and a fruitful combination of empirical research and abstraction, orthodox as well as unorthodox thinking.

Sheikh is a senior scientist at the WRR (the Dutch Scientific Council for Government Policy) and he teaches in Amsterdam at VU University.

AGNES MEYER-BRANDIS

ARTIST

Agnes Meyer-Brandis is a German artist known for her imaginative and research-driven works that blur the boundaries between art and science. Born in Aachen in 1973 and based in Berlin, she originally studied mineralogy before pursuing sculpture and media arts in Maastricht, Düsseldorf, and Cologne. Her practice explores atmospheric, astronomical, and subterranean phenomena through poetic storytelling and scientific inquiry. Meyer-Brandis is best known for her internationally acclaimed project Moon Goose Colony, in which she raised and trained geese as astronauts, inspired by a 17th-century science fiction tale. Her work often involves collaborations with scientists and institutions, including experiments in zero gravity with the German Space Agency. She has exhibited at major venues such as Centre Pompidou, Ars Electronica, and MIT Media Lab, and has received numerous awards including the Prix Ars Electronica and the European Kairos Prize. Meyer-Brandis invites audiences into fantastical yet rigorously researched worlds that reimagine the relationship between humans, nature, and technology.

ŠPELA PETRIČ

ARTIST

Špela Petrič is a Slovenian hybrid media artist and researcher based in Ljubljana and Amsterdam. Trained in natural sciences, she holds a PhD in biology and advanced degrees in transmedia studies . Her interdisciplinary practice fuses biomedia, new media, and performative methods to explore and challenge the underpinnings of our (bio)technological societies, with particular attention to automation of care in fields like agriculture and medicine

MEIKE BARTELS

PSYCHOLOGIST AND BEHAVIOR GENETICIST

Prof. Meike Bartels is a Dutch psychologist and behavior geneticist known for her pioneering research on the genetics of happiness and well-being. She is a professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where she leads research on how genetic and environmental factors influence mental health and resilience. Her work combines psychology, genetics, and large-scale data analysis to better understand why some people maintain well-being even in the face of adversity.