Shefali Malhotra

Shefali is Senior Research Manager, AI & Tech Policy, at Digital Futures Lab. She works at the intersection of law, policy and implementation research examining digital governance models, AI & big data, and digital health in India. She is particularly interested in the politics of digital policy design in India and the Majority World, investigating how policies are shaped, whose interests they serve, and their implications for human rights.

Shefali's expertise spans legal and policy analysis as well as qualitative research methods, enabling cross-cutting insights into technology governance.
She has over a decade of work experience in public policy research, including extensive work on digital health governance; and has led and contributed to projects engaging government, regulators, constitutional authorities, nonprofits, academia, policy experts and civil society groups.

Most recently, Shefali provided research support to the Lancet Citizens’ Commission on Re-imagining India’s Health System, mapping legal, ethical and human rights challenges posed by AI, big data analytics and other emerging technologies in the health sector. In the past, she has worked with organisations, such as the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, the Centre for Civil Society and Lawyers’ Collective.

Shefali holds a Master’s degree in Political Science from the Leiden University, the Netherland and a law degree from Symbiosis International University. An avid writer, she completed the Fellowship in Global Journalism from the University of Toronto in 2023, and her work has appeared in outlets including the British Medical Journal, Think Global Health, Science and Nature.