Devi Malaal completes research trip to Denmark and the Netherlands
Author ADM+S Centre
Date 13 January 2026
ADM+S researcher Devi Malaal, who is a PhD student at RMIT University, has recently completed a 2 month research trip to Denmark and the Netherlands. Devi participated in the Doctoral Consortium of Aarhus University’s decennial conference, Aarhus 2025: Computing (x) Crisis and undertook a visiting scholarship at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.
Devi was selected as one of 12 participants in the Doctoral Consortium at Aarhus 2025: Computing (x) Crisis, and the sole representative from the Asia-Pacific region. The Consortium brought together PhD researchers from across disciplines for an intensive mentorship process and research discussion on the conference theme ‘Computing (x) Crisis’
The conference program invited speakers to present new agendas and perspectives for addressing the current state of computing, including political activism, civic engagement, aesthetics, and creative practice. Devi presented her work on large language models in news and media contexts, alongside projects exploring diverse human-AI futures.
Devi then travelled to the Netherlands, where she was a visiting student scholar at Utrecht University, hosted by ADM+S Affiliate Professor Annette Markham at the Futures + Literacies + Methods Lab (FLL). While there, Devi participated in seminars and workshops focussed on speculative design thinking, and critical data studies in relation to Generative AI. She also assisted with coordination of these events, including organising an introductory Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) workshop.
“The workshop was possibly the most fruitful aspect of my time in the Netherlands,” Devi said.
“It provided me with important foundational knowledge about how Large language Models operate and the requirements for installing, operating, and fine-tuning smaller models, knowledge that I aim to continue building on as I enter the second half of my PhD candidature”
While in the Netherlands, Devi connected with several other ADM+s affiliates based at the University of Amsterdam’s Information Retrieval Lab. She was invited to participate in a series of one-one sessions with their research students as well as the program leader. Devi and other researchers were able to discuss and share feedback about the aims and methods of their respective projects.
This visit was funded by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Societies’ Research Training Grant
