Talks & keynotes
Katherine Elkins speaks on AI safety, governance, creativity, cultural heritage, and democracy. NIST AI Safety Institute Consortium. Available for keynotes, panels, workshops, and expert consultations.
Recent Keynotes & Invited Talks
OpenAI Higher Education Forum
Selected Education Guild speaker at OpenAI's invitation-only forum in San Francisco. Presented computational humanities research and human-centered AI curriculum.
OpenAI Higher Education Forum, San Francisco, October 2025.
Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar — METC Conference
Keynote on AI and the humanities at Weill Cornell's international campus in Doha, addressing narrative medicine and high-stakes clinical decision-making.
Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar, METC Conference, Doha, October 2025.
RALLY Innovation Conference
Spoke on human algorithms and the intersection of narrative, emotion, and AI systems. Indianapolis.
RALLY Innovation Conference, Indianapolis, 2025.
Helix Center Roundtables
Roundtable discussions on AI, language, and emotion with Ned Block, Francesca Rossi, Joseph LeDoux, and Rosalind Picard.
The Helix Center, October 2022. With Ned Block, Francesca Rossi, and Kyunghyun Cho.
Recent Talks and Invited Lectures
- Apr 2026OSU Chase Center, “Civic Education After AI”
- Oct 2025Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar, METC Conference (keynote)
- Oct 2025OpenAI Higher Education Forum, Education Guild selected speaker
- Jun 2025Chronicle of Higher Education Virtual Forum (invited speaker)
- Feb 2025Worcester Polytechnic Institute Global Lab, “AI at a Crossroads: Who Shapes the Future?” (public lecture)
- 2024–25Bloomberg, AI Strategy course development
- 2024Carleton College Day of Digital Humanities, “Human-Centered AI: High-Impact Change from the Classroom to the Lab” (keynote)
- 2024Dartmouth, invited talk
- Nov 2023Mount St. Mary's University, Meredith Donovan Lecturer
- 2022Helix Center roundtable on natural language generation systems, with Ned Block, Francesca Rossi, and Kyunghyun Cho (one month before ChatGPT)
- 2019Modernist Studies Association, first transdisciplinary AI research presentation
Public Humanities
Three audio lecture series with The Modern Scholar, distributed via Audible and Recorded Books for broad public audiences.
Odyssey of the West, Part Six: Towards the Modern
Lectures on the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, drawing on Elkins's specialization in nineteenth and twentieth century French culture.
The Giants of French Literature: Balzac, Flaubert, Proust, and Camus
Eight-lecture series on the four French literary titans whose works shaped modern literature. Reviewed in Library Journal as “a compelling survey course recommended for individuals seeking an intellectual challenge.”
The Modern Novel
Lecture series examining the development of the modern novel through Joyce, Kafka, Proust, and Woolf.
Full Engagements
| 2026 | Christian Science Monitor (expert quote) · NPR/WOSU (Archival Intelligence) · AI and Democracy, Ohio State University (invited, April) |
| 2025 | CHE Virtual Forum · OpenAI Higher Ed Forum · RALLY Innovation · Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar (keynote) · Yale Alumni in AI · NIST AISIC (plenary) · Concordia College · Smith College · ICML 2025 (accepted) · Forbes feature · Schmidt Sciences (Archival Intelligence) |
| 2024 | ICML 2024 (oral, Vienna) · UNESCO MONDIACULT (Cairo) · Meta Open Innovation (London) · Bloomberg AI Strategy · Lafayette College · Austin College · Carleton College · Yale · Washington University in St. Louis |
| 2023 | Helix Center Emotion roundtable · Concordia University Montreal (invited lecture) · Wofford College · McGill/Pitt/CMU · University of Tennessee, Knoxville · Al Jazeera |
| 2022 | Helix Center NLG roundtable × 2 |
Interested in having Katherine speak at your event?
Book Katherine to SpeakContact: kateelkins2000@gmail.com