
Shimona Mohan is an Associate Researcher on Gender & Disarmament and Security & Technology at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) in Geneva, Switzerland. She is also one of the 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics for 2024. Her areas of focus include the multifarious intersections of security, emerging technologies (in particular AI and cybersecurity), gender and disarmament.
Shimona has published across and beyond her areas of focus and presented her research at various platforms. Some of these include the UN General Assembly in New York, UNESCO in Nepal, CCW GGE on LAWS in Geneva, the Responsible AI in the Military (REAIM) Summit in the Netherlands and South Korea, the Internet Governance Forum in Japan and Saudi Arabia, the Ministry of Defence and the Cabinet Secretariat of the Government of India, and the Department of Defense of the US.
Shimona’s previous work includes stints at the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), the Think20 Secretariat under India’s G20 presidency in 2023, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the Ministry of External Affairs as well as NITI Aayog under the Government of India.
Shimona holds a Master in International Affairs from the Geneva Graduate Institute in Switzerland; a Bachelor degree (with honours) in Political Science from Miranda House at the University of Delhi; a certificate in Technology Law and Policy from the Centre for Communication Governance at the National Law University Delhi (NLUD); and a certification in Armament and Disarmament from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and the Alva Myrdal Centre at the Uppsala University in Sweden.
Publications:
Mohan, Shimona, & Cho, Dongyoun (2024). Gender and Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems. UNIDIR. https://unidir.org/publication/gender-and-lethal-autonomous-weapons-systems/
Mohan, Shimona (2024). “Passive Ambitions, Active Limitations: Defence AI in India. In Heiko Borchert, Torben Schütz & Joseph Verbovszky (Eds.), The Very Long Game: 25 Case Studies on the Global State of Defense AI (pp. 445–463). Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-58649-1
Mohan, Shimona (2023). Filling the Blanks: Putting Gender into Military AI. Observer Research Foundation (ORF). https://www.orfonline.org/research/filling-the-blanks-putting-gender-into-military-a-i Mohan, Shimona (2023). Managing Expectations: Explainable A.I. and its Military Implications. Observer Research Foundation (ORF). https://www.orfonline.org/research/managing-expectations-explainable-a-i-and-its-military-implications
Contact:
E-Mail: shimona.mohan@un.org