December 16, 2025: Dutch university’s free conference titled ‘AI, Desire, Intimacy: Feeling Through Machines’
by Piyush Mathur
The Netherlands-based Utrecht University will host a conference exploring the contemporary technological systems' impact on how people interact with one another within realms crisscrossed by intimacy, desire, emotions, and empathy.
The event will start at 11 AM (Central European Standard Time) and end at 12:30 PM on December 16, 2025.
The starting time would thus be 10 AM UTC; 10 AM Mali; 12 PM Egypt; 1 PM Kenya; 2:00 PM MUT; 2:30 PM Afghanistan; 3:00 PM Pakistan; 3:30 PM IST; and 6:00 PM China.
To join this event, one must register via this link:
Moderated by Payal Arora, the event will see presentations by Tatsita Mishra, Christl de Kloe, Rana Kuseyri, Weijie Huang, and Rébecca Franco. With the exception of Mishra and de Kloe, all these individuals are employees of Utrecht University. (Mishra is co-affiliated with the India-based Mudra Institute of Communications and the Sweden-based Lund University; de Kloe is co-affiliated with the Sweden-based Linköping University and Utrecht University.)
The event’s self-description on its website notes that its programme prioritises ‘feminist, decolonial, and justice-driven perspectives on AI’. (By ‘decolonial’, the description presumptively refers to perspectives from former European colonies otherwise duly aligned with the contemporary ideals of the European Union.) The self-description is accessible via this link, which includes informal abstracts of each presentation-to-be:
https://www.uu.nl/en/events/ai-desire-intimacy-feeling-through-machines
The event is co-organised by Utrecht University’s Governing the Digital Society (GDS) doctoral colloquium and the Inclusive AI Lab.
The physical venue for the event will be this: Muntstraat 2A, Room 1.11, Utrecht