Hopper Lecture 2026: Building Feminist Decolonial AI in Latin America
You're Invited to the Hopper Lecture with Dr. Paola Ricaurte
Developing anti-capitalist, anti-colonial, and anti-patriarchal technologies in contexts marked by inequality and violence requires confronting some of the deepest structural problems of our societies. In an increasingly adverse geopolitical and regional landscape, this is not only a technical undertaking but also a challenge for feminist and decolonial praxis itself.
Building alternative technological futures requires navigating political, financial, infrastructural, and human capacity constraints while, at times, recalibrating strategies and expectations. Drawing on six years of work by the Feminist AI Network in Latin America and the Caribbean, this talk examines efforts to advance feminist, decolonial AI across the region.
It reflects on the key lessons, tensions, and insights that have emerged from this process, highlighting both the possibilities and the limits of building transformative AI within structures of exclusion and asymmetric power relations.
Date: October 27, 2026
Time: 4:30 - 6:30 PM
Location: MacDonald Stewart Hall - MACS 209
Special Guest: Dr. Paola Ricuarte
Dr. Paola Ricaurte is a full professor at Tecnológico de Monterrey and a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.
She is the co-founder of Tierra Común, an academic and activist network committed to decolonizing data, and leads the Latin American and Caribbean Feminist AI Network. Her work bridges academia, activism, innovation and policymaking, with a central focus on human rights from decolonial and feminist perspectives.
Paola serves on several international expert committees, including the Global Partnership on AI (GPAI), UNESCO’s AI Ethics Experts Without Borders (AIEB), and the Women for Ethical AI (W4EAI) platform. She was included in the 2025 TIME100 AI list of the most influential people in artificial intelligence.
About the Hopper Lecture
The Annual Hopper Lecture is made possible through the generous sponsorship of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in honour of its founding president, David Hopper, who served in that role from 1970-1978. Each year, an eminent international thinker provides a free public lecture about critical current and future issues in international development at the University of Guelph and a second Canadian university.
The Hopper Lecture represents a unique long-term collaboration between IDRC and the University of Guelph – the only collaboration of its kind in IDRC's history. It also celebrates the many significant connections between the two institutions. In 1957 after the completion of his PhD, David Hopper obtained his first academic appointment as Associate Professor of Agricultural Economics at the University of Guelph, prior to subsequent positions with the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, IDRC and the World Bank.
The University of Guelph and IDRC are proud to support the Hopper Lecture, which provides an important opportunity to share cutting edge research about international development and engage with the Canadian public about global issues.
