Technological Futures Now: Racism, Imperialism, and the Surrogate Human Effect
Conference
This two-day symposium takes Surrogate Humanity: Race, Robots, and the Politics of Technological Futures by Kalindi Vora1 and Neda Atanasoski2 as a generative starting point for urgent feminist and antiracist conversations about technology in our current moment. Central to the book are the concepts of the surrogate human effect and technoliberalism, which together diagnose how liberal promises of freedom are sustained through conditions of structural unfreedom. While technology may not directly cause unfreedom, it automates, scales up and accelerates the reproduction of racial, gendered, and colonial hierarchies through its entwinement with global capitalism, militarism, and empire. The symposium aims to probe how these insights might guide historical and contemporary approaches to the accelerating integration of AI, robotics, and algorithmic systems into a variety of geopolitical milieus.
Across the sessions, the symposium asks: What visions of technological futures are possible—or necessary—when viewed from the standpoint of feminist, decolonial, and antiracist critique? How does scholarly work today help us understand and contest the uneven distributions of power, agency, and vulnerability that characterize our technological present?
Gathering a diverse group of scholars whose work speaks to critical questions of racism, empire, labor and technology, the symposium invites participants to reflect on their own research through the lens of Surrogate Humanity. Panelists will reflect on the book’s framing concepts as a springboard to engage with pressing issues such as the rise of tech oligarchies, the consolidation of technofascist regimes, the emergence of a new AI Cold War, and grassroots organizing around the impacts of generative AI.
Schedule:
June 30
02.00pm - Welcome Address by Neda Atanasoski and Kalindi Vora
02.30pm - First Student Panel:
- Dalia N. Obiedat: Surrogates of Resistance: Arab Atheists, ChatGPT, and the Technopolitics of Freedom and Desire
- Leila Mahmutovic: Automated Affection and Recognition without Relation: On Feeling Understood by Something that Can't Hear You
- Moderator: tba
03.30pm - Break
04.00pm - Panel:
- Nishant Shah
- Erin McElroy
- Goda Klumbytė
- Moderator: Julia Maria Mönig
July 1
Morning - Networking Session - Feminist AI Network and AI Queens* of Bonn
12.00pm - Lunch
01.30pm - Second Student Panel:
- Inga Triebel: Pluralist Feminisms and the Technosphere: Perspectives on Technoliberalism in Light of the Controvery about the Digital Feminist Collective Las Brujas del Mar (Mexico).
- Vahab Sourinejad: Beyond Being Outsmarted. The Danger of Human Stupidity in the Age of AI through the Lens of Dialectic of Enlightenment.
- Moderator: Lennard Landgraf
02.30pm - Break
03.00pm - Panel:
- Neda Atanasoski and Kalindi Vora
- Moderator: Markus Gabriel
05.00pm - Wrap-Up

Registration, Time and Place
Datum
Monday, June 30, 2025, 12am - Tuesday, July 1, 2025, 5pm
Center for Science and Thought
Konrad-Zuse-Platz 1.3, 53227 Bonn, Germany
Registration
To register, please contact mlinski@uni-bonn.de
Desirable Digitalisation: Rethinking AI for Just and Sustainable Futures3
Our research program is a collaboration between the Universities of Cambridge and Bonn and numerous international partners, and is funded by the Mercator Foundation in Germany.
We investigate how to design AI (artificial intelligence) and other digital technologies in a responsible way, placing the questions of social justice and environmental sustainability at the very heart of our work.
Contact and Organization
Christiane Schäfer
University of Bonn, Center for Science and Thought, Institute of Philosophy, Konrad-Zuse-Platz 1-3
53227 Bonn
Tanja Mlinski
University of Bonn, Center for Science and Thought, Institute of Philosophy, Konrad-Zuse-Platz 1-3
53227 Bonn
Links
- https://www.desirableai.com/kalindi-vora
- https://www.desirableai.com/neda-atanasoki
- https://www.desirableai.com