We’re thrilled to announce that our keynote speaker is Dr Hansika Kapoor!
Keynote address: A Spotlight on Dark Creativity
Abstract: The implicit assumption that creativity is meant for good and benevolent deeds is currently being challenged. In this talk, I will outline my work on dark creativity, stylistically understood as how people get good ideas to do bad things. In general, features of the person (like moral flexibility) and situation (ill-defined instructions) interact within a certain zeitgeist to yield dark creative acts. Through the AMORAL model of dark creativity (Kapoor & Kaufman, 2022), I will describe the components of such acts at the individual, societal, and broader cultural levels, as well as their immediate and long term consequences. I will also illustrate the emergence of dark creativity across multiple domains (e.g., public policy, misinformation, artificial intelligence) to make a case for its future investigation in diverse settings.
Dr Hansika Kapoor is a Research Author at the Department of Psychology, Monk Prayogshala, Mumbai, India. She holds a PhD from IIT, Bombay in the area of dark creativity aka how people get good ideas to do bad things. She is the recipient of the Fulbright-Nehru Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship (2019-2020) and is an Affiliate at the University of Connecticut.
Dr Kapoor won the 2025 Daniel E. Berlyne Award from Division 10 of the American Psychological Association for outstanding research by an early career scholar. She is a published author, practising psychologist, and has diverse experiences in research consultancy in behavioural and cognitive science.
Dr. Kapoor has been cited as a subject matter expert in numerous features on social and cognitive psychology in the Indian context. Hansika has also been featured in the book 31 Fantastic Adventures in Science: Women Scientists in India. Her research interests lie in creativity, socio-moral psychology, and behavioural science.
She tweets @hansika_kapoor. To know more, please visit: www.hansikakapoor.in
UK Creativity Researchers 