Hi, I’m Shivani Kumar

I am on the academic job market for positions starting in 2026!

I’m a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the BlaBlaBlab at University of Michigan, where I am working with Prof David Jurgens on culturally enriched and morally refined language models.

I completed my PhD from the LCS2 Lab, advised by Prof Tanmoy Chakraborty, from IIITD, before which I had completed my masters (M.Sc.) and bachelors (B.Sc.) from University of Delhi. My PhD journey took me deep into the territory of conversational AI, where I explored the lucidity of dialogue - exploring everything from emotions, humour, and sarcasm to the unique essence of each speaker.

I am a researcher in NLP and human–AI interaction. I design, analyze, and evaluate AI systems with a focus on human-centered dimensions of language, including affective and socio-cultural factors such as emotions, morality, and culture. My work investigates how these systems understand, express, and explain these complex phenomena. Looking ahead, I aim to extend this research to rhetorical strategies, exploring how human-specific dimensions are leveraged by AI systems to persuade or influence human decision-making.