SPEAKERS | Brave New World

SPEAKERS 2025

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

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.

FRANS SNIK

ASTRONOMER

Frans Snik (1979) is an astronomer at Leiden Observatory (Leiden University, the Netherlands). His group develops advanced optical instrumentation for telescopes around the world and in space, to directly observe and characterize planets orbiting other stars than the Sun, with an ultimate goal to detect signs of extraterrestrial life in their light. To achieve an integrated approach to high-contrast imaging, Frans introduced novel liquid-crystal technology to develop broadband coronagraphs, in combination with wavefront sensing, spectroscopy, and polarimetry. His research led to the first detection of a polarization for an exoplanetary companion (DH Tau b), caused by the formation of moons. His group demonstrated the possibility of the remote detection of homochirality in chlorophyll, a strong biosignature.
These activities also lead to a range of spin-off activities here on Earth: from air pollution monitoring to biomedical sensing. Frans invented the core technology of the SPEX instrument concept that is currently in-orbit as part of the NASA climate satellite PACE/SPEXone, to measure the effects of anthropogenic aerosols on our climate and our health. The development of SPEX led to the development of iSPEX; a smartphone camera add-on that enables air pollution measurements. Frans led the iSPEX project that involved thousands of citizen scientists in the Netherlands and throughout Europe to constitute a unique air pollution measurement network. Frans is currently developing the LOUPE instrument for observations of the Earth-as-an-exoplanet from the Moon, the CoNGA instrument concept for real-time imaging of trace gases, and the HYPERION instrument for medical imaging.
Frans often collaborates with all kinds of scientists and scholars (biologists, engineers, social scientists, art historians, environmental scientists, medical experts), industrial partners, visual artists, policy makers, and society-at-large. He often teaches children from underprivileged backgrounds at the Weekendschool, is a curator at the Old Observatory in Leiden, and regularly appears in the media. Moreover, he is an avid collector of circularly polarized beetles, and builds Lego versions of large telescopes. In 2025, the minor planet 12941 (3.6 km diameter at 2.636 AU) was named “Franssnik”.

JORAN LAMMERS

SPATIAL DESIGN RESEARCHER

Joran conducts spatial design research and teaches about the future imagination of living environments at the University of Leiden. With a background in landscape architecture, he focuses on future images in which a balance is sought between the consumption needs of people—such as food and energy—and the requirements of our living environment, including clean air, nature quality, and water quality. With a realistically optimistic perspective, he clarifies the complexity of our living environment and aims to stimulate a new form of progressive thinking.

MEET OF OUR PREVIOUS SPEAKERS

NINA SCHICK

AUTHOR AND POLITICAL ADVISOR

Nina Schick is an author, advisor and speaker, specialising in how technology is transforming geopolitics and society. Nina is an expert deepfakes and synthetic media, cybersecurity and the geopolitics of technology.

She has advised global leaders including Joe Biden, and Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former Secretary General of NATO. She has been published in the MIT Tech Review, The Times, UnHerd and TIME. Her debut book, ‘Deepfakes,’ was released in 2020.

Nina speaks seven languages and calls London, Berlin and Kathmandu home.

ANDREA EVERS

PROFESSOR OF HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY

Andrea Evers is professor of Health Psychology and chair of the Institute of Psychology at Leiden University. She is also affiliated to the Technical University Delft and Erasmus University Rotterdam as Medical Delta Professor Healthy Society. As a clinical psychologist (BIG) and cognitive behavioral therapist (VGCT), she translates insights from fundamental research into applications in practice. She received several prestigious research grants and awards for her work, including the Stevin Prize, the most important scientific award for research with a social impact in the Netherlands. She is also a member of the KNAW (Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences) and the KHMW (Royal Dutch Society of Sciences).

HAROON SHEIKH

MARIETJE SCHAAKE

DIRECTOR AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY CYBER POLICY CENTERE

Marietje Schaake is international policy director at Stanford University Cyber Policy Center and international policy fellow at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.

Between 2009 and 2019, she served as a Member of European Parliament for the Dutch liberal democratic party where she focused on trade, foreign affairs, and technology policies. She writes a monthly column for the Financial Times and serves on the UN’s AI Advisory Body.

Marietje is an (Advisory) Board Member with a number of non-profits including MERICS, ECFR, ORF and AccessNow.