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Master of Philosophy (M.Phil.), Jawaharlal Nehru University

Master of Arts (M.A.), University of Delhi

Bachelor of Arts (Honours) (B.A. Hons.), University of Delhi

Prof. Avantika Tewari

Assistant Professor

Email avantika.tewari@jgu.edu.in
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ORCID ID 0000-0003-0468-8597
Key Expertise Theory of Subject, Social Theory, Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, Political Economy, Artificial Intelligence, Platform Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Labor Theory, Social Movements, Critical Legal Thinking

Master of Philosophy (M.Phil.), Jawaharlal Nehru University

Master of Arts (M.A.), University of Delhi

Bachelor of Arts (Honours) (B.A. Hons.), University of Delhi

Biography

Avantika Tewari is an MPhil and PhD scholar at the Centre for Comparative Politics and Political Theory, Jawaharlal Nehru University. She was a visiting fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, where she anchored the Science, Technology, and Democracy project. She has previously worked with IT for Change, the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. She is the editor of Feminist Perspectives on Social Media Governance and has contributed chapters to Psychoanalysis and ChatGPT and AI from the Global Majority—the official outcome of the UN IGF’s Data and AI Governance Coalition.

Her research spans Marxist political economy, feminist theory, value theory, philosophy, and psychoanalysis. Her writings have appeared in The Indian Express, Critical Legal Thinking, Heinrich Böll Stiftung, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Bot Populi, Everyday Analysis, Sublation Magazine, Critical Collective and other academic and public platforms.
 

Political Theory

Travel and Accommodation Grant: Department of Anthropology, University of Amsterdam for attending the conference on “Public Debates, Everyday Injustice and AI in the Majority World,” 2-3 October 2025.
 
Registration Fees Grant and Partial Travel Grant: Awarded by the 7th Annual Conference of the International Network on Digital Labor (INDL-7), covering registration fees to attend the conference in Santiago, Chile, from October 28-30, 2024.

Registration Fees Grant – European Conference on Politics and Gender (Ghent University, July 8-10, 2024)

Plenary Roundtable Keynote Speaker Invitation – Digitalisation, AI, and Feminist Futures (Feminist Africa and IFJP Conference, Mozambique, July 25-28, 2024)

Travel Grant – Exploring Epistemic Virtues and Vices: Data, Infrastructures, and Episteme (C²DH, Luxembourg, March 14-16, 2024) Sixth Conference on Digital Humanities and Digital History, organized by the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH), the German Historical Institute Washington (GHI), the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM), and the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ) Tokyo.

Travel Grant – YouthMediaLife 2024 Conference (University of Vienna, March 25-28, 2024)

Full Travel and Accommodation Grant – ʻAlgorithms for Her?ʼ Conference (University of Sheffield, March 23-24, 2023) Organized with support from the University of Sheffield Management School and the University of Sheffield Digital Society Network.

Geeta Chopra Memorial Scholarship (2015)
Awarded by Jesus and Mary College, given to five exceptional students selected by the Staff Council of the College.

IDRC Canada’s Recognize-Resist-Remedy Project with IT for Change and InternetLab, Brazil (August 2019 – April 2022)

IT for Change’s Ford Foundation's BUILD Program (2021-2022)

Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) - Berlin and IT for Change’s Feminist Visions of the Digital (2022-23)

IT For Change's School of Digital Justice: Institute on Frontiers and Frames for a New Digitality (June 2022 – February 2023)

IT for Change and Commonwealth of Learning’s “Gender, Patriarchy and Digitality” Course

Visiting Fellow, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), New Delhi (July 2023 – August 2024)

Peer Reviewer, Economic and Political Weekly, 2025

Peer Reviewer, Political Geography, 2024

Co-convenor of a 36 member global working group on Feminist Digital Justice.

Member, STS-India network.

Member, Responsible Data network.

Member, Just Net Coalition (JNC - Forum). 

Member, Coalition for Independent Technology Research. 

Member, Cyber Universe. 

Member, Delhi Feminists network. 

Member, STS India – Delhi Chapter. 

Member, Golden Key International Honour Society.

An Exploratory Study of Discrimination Based on Non-Normative Genders and Sexualities An Exploratory Study of Discrimination Based on Non-Normative Genders and Sexualities Jan 2018 - Jan 2020

Tewari, Avantika. “The Infrastructure of Digital Capitalism.” Economic & Political Weekly, vol. 60, no. 20, 17 May 2025. ISSN (Print): 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online): 2349-8846 Link to the Article

Tewari, Avantika. 2025. “Zwigato: Algorithmic Mastery over Life?” Economic & Political Weekly Vol. 60 Issue No. 8, 22 February 2025. pp . 95-96. ISSN (Print): 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online): 2349-8846. Link to the Article

Tewari, Avantika. 2025. “DeepSeek’s Disruptive Intervention: AI beyond Big Tech’s Grip.” Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. 60, Issue No. 7, 15 February 2025, pp 15-18. ISSN (Print): 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online): 2349-8846. Link to Article

“Zepto workers’ strike: In India’s gig economy, the continuing struggle for dignity.” The Indian Express (28 March 2025)

“The Gaze Wears You: Meta’s Smart Glasses and the Fantasy of Seamless Mediation.” Everyday Analysis (27 May 2025)

“The Undead Gesture of AI, Art, and the Politics of Simulation,” Everyday Analysis (2 April, 2025)

“Platform Capitalism in Emergence Healthcare,” Bot Populi (25 March 2025)

“Just-in-Time Knowledge: Digital Technology and the Neoliberal Transformation of Education,” Bot Populi (21 January 2025)

“H-1B visa row brings in differences between Indian and American rights,” The Indian Express (January 1, 2025)

Tewari, Avantika. 2024. “The Prosumer in AI Governance: Class Antagonisms and the Social Relations of Labor.” United Nations’ Data and AI Governance Coalition, “AI from the Global Majority.” pp. 215-227. Link to the Article

Tewari, Avantika. 2024. “Anatomy of a Fall.” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 59, Issue No. 44-45, November 2, 2024, pp. 81-82. ISSN (Print): 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online): 2349-8846. Link to Article

“Unintentional Faith in Technology: Outsourcing Meaning to AI,” Sublation Magazine (September 10, 2024).

“The Premature Death of Noam Chomsky in Digital Discourse,” Sublation Magazine (July 11, 2024).

“Amar Singh Chamkila: A Musical Maverick,” Critical Collective (May 15, 2024).

Editor, Feminist Perspectives on Social Media Governance (February 2023).

Contribution included in Psychoanalysis and ChatGPT (June 21, 2023) alongside Slavoj Žižek, Duane Rousselle, Alex Taek-Gwang Lee, Jacob Johanssen, and others.

“UP Safe City Project: Controlling Women Is Not Safety,” The Indian Express (December 6, 2023).

“SRK in 'Jawan' Is Not Just Another 'Secular Champion of Politics,’” The Indian Express (September 17, 2023).

Contributions to Zizekian Analysis: “Don’t Get Excited, Excitel Yourself” (May 30, 2023) and “The ‘True’ Story of Anna Delvey” (July 3, 2023).

“Feminist Perspectives on Social Media Governance - A Snapshot,” Bot Populi (March 27, 2023).

“Abusive, Manipulative, Defensive: ChatGPT Is an Extension of Us and We Love It,” The Indian Express (February 23, 2023).

“I Chat, Therefore I Am,” Sublation Magazine (February 22, 2023).

“Beyond Data Bodies – Reproductive Justice in the Post-Dobbs Moment,” Heinrich Böll Stiftung (January 4, 2023).

“Building Feminist Futures in the Digitalizing World of Work,” Bot Populi (May 4, 2022).

“A Feminist Social Contract for a New Digital Economic Future,” Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (March 15, 2022).

“Davos 2022 and the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” Bot Populi (January 25, 2022).

“Anti-Capitalism to Dismantle Corporate Power, Precarious Work, and Digital Market,” Capire (February 1, 2022).

Tewari, Avantika. 2022. “Cultural Frames of the Digital: A Window into Subjectivity.” Journal of AI Humanities, Chung-Ang University, Seoul, South Korea, Vol. 11, pp. 37-78. Print ISSN: 2635-4691 | Online ISSN: 2951-388X. DOI: 10.46397/JAIH.11.2.

Tewari, Avantika. 2021. “Life versus Freedom: The Corona Crisis and the States of Exception.” The JMC Review, Vol. 5 (December), pp. 54-96. ISSN: 2456-9550. Link to Article

Tewari, Avantika. 2021. “Confronting Agamben on the Pandemic: Biopolitics, Class Struggle, and Surveillance Capitalism.” Law, Culture and Humanities, SAGE Publications. Special Issue: “Different Lives of Pandemic.” ISSN: 1743-8721 | eISSN: 1743-9752. DOI: 10.1177/17438721211018765.

Tewari, Avantika. 2021. “Corona Crisis or Life versus Freedom?” Revista Direito, Estado e Sociedade, Law School of Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Vol. 58, Jan/Jun 2021, pp. 42-80. ISSN: 1516-6104. DOI: 10.17808/des.58.1777.

Tewari, Avantika. 2021. “Fighting the Machine? De-Mystifying Technology under Capitalism.” Journal of AI Humanities, Chung-Ang University, Seoul, South Korea, Vol. 7, pp. 25-58. ISSN: 2635-4691. DOI: 10.46397/JAIH.7.2.

M.Phil Thesis: Shifting Sand Dunes of Sovereignty: Women’s Hostel as a Threshold of the Political (2021).

"Prisons Should Not Be Turned Into Death Sentences" – Akademi Magazine (May 14, 2021).

"How is JNU Confronting the Corona-Crisis?" – GroundXero (May 1, 2021).

"A Reading of Pagglait: On the Burden of Mourning & Enchainment to Melancholy" – Feminism in India (April 5, 2021).

Report: “Housing, Discrimination and Non-Normative Gender and Sexuality” (as part of the Exploratory Study of Discriminations Based on Non-Normative Genders and Sexualities, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, September 2019).

Podcast: “Queering Homes, Queering Lives.”

“Women in Prison, Women in Resistance,” republished in Journal of People, Peasants and Workers. (January 25, 2019).
Email avantika.tewari@jgu.edu.in
ORCID ID 0000-0003-0468-8597
Key Expertise Theory of Subject, Social Theory, Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, Political Economy, Artificial Intelligence, Platform Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Labor Theory, Social Movements, Critical Legal Thinking
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