Sahana Udupa

Prof. Sahana Udupa is a Professor of Media Anthropology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU), affiliated with the Faculty of Cultural Studies and Department of Ethnology. She holds fellowships at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center (2024–2025) and previously served as an Associate Professor at Central European University. Her research focuses on digital politics, AI ethics, and online extreme speech, with grants from the European Research Council, Henry Luce Foundation, and others. Key projects include studies on small social media platforms, AI4Dignity collaboration, and platform governance challenges. She authored Digital Unsettling (2023) and co-edited WhatsApp in the World (2024), exploring encrypted messaging and disinformation. Udupa advises global institutions like the UN and chairs editorial boards for journals such as American Ethnologist. Her work bridges academia and policy, addressing digital harms and decolonial frameworks.

Education & Positions:

• PhD in Anthropology (prior academic trajectory not explicitly detailed)
• Previous roles: Max Planck Institute Research Fellow, CEU Associate Professor

Research Interests: Digital mediation, AI content moderation, global disinformation ecosystems, and coloniality's role in online exclusionary practices. She emphasizes ethical scaling frameworks for platform governance and participatory research methods.

Key Contributions: UN-commissioned report on digital technology and extreme speech (2021), ERC-funded projects on AI and content moderation, and theoretical work on 'lived encryptions' in encrypted platforms. Her recent focus includes migration trends to niche social media platforms by far-right groups.

Awards: Francqui Chair (2022), ICA Outstanding Article Award (2023), ERC grants.

Grants & Labs: Leads the ERC Consolidator Grant project on small social media platforms and manages AI4Dignity collaborative coding initiatives. Collaborates internationally with scholars on digital policy and platform studies.