Nina da Hora

Nina da Hora (born 1995) is an Afro-Brazilian activist and computer scientist known for her research on artificial intelligence ethics, computer vision, facial recognition technologies and digital rights, and for her efforts to increase women's participation in technological development. She is a researcher at the Center for Technology and Society at Fundação Getúlio Vargas (CTS/FGV) and the founder of Instituto da Hora, a non-profit research organization dedicated to digital rights in Brazil.

She is the author of the concept of computational epistemicide , a theoretical framework developed in her master's research that describes the technical-scale erasure of ways of knowing and existing through the design of automated systems.

Education Hora earned her bachelor's degree in Computer Science at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and a master's degree in Computer Science at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), with research developed at the Recod.Ai laboratory on bias mitigation in computer vision systems.

Research Hora's research focuses on the ethics of algorithms and artificial intelligence, with particular attention to computer vision, facial recognition technologies, cybersecurity and the political economy of automated systems.

In her master's work and subsequent publications, she developed the concept of computational epistemicide to describe how automated systems do not merely reproduce social inequalities but actively erase entire epistemologies through the design of data collection, modelling, optimisation metrics and computational infrastructure. According to her formulation, computational epistemicide operates across four interrelated layers: data collection and ontology; modelling and representation; metrics and optimisation; and governance and infrastructure.

Career Hora is the founder of Instituto da Hora, a non-profit research organization led by Black and Indigenous women, focused on digital rights, digital sovereignty and internet governance in Brazil.

She is the creator of the YouTube channel Computação sem Caô and of the podcast Ogunhê, dedicated to the history of African scientists.

Selected publications Marini, Marisol; da Hora, Nina; Avila, Sandra (2025). "Recognition under Suspicion: Alliances Between Anthropology and Computer Science to Confront the Understanding of Ethics in the Development of Facial Recognition". GIS – Gesture, Image and Sound 10 (1): e230902. da Hora, Nina (2026). "Imagens que a máquina lê, mundos que ela apaga: notas sobre epistemicídio computacional". Arcos Design 19 (1). da Hora, Nina (2 September 2025). "Contra a métrica do mundo". Stanford Social Innovation Review Brasil, Special Issue – Possible Futures (AI).

Recognition In 2021, Hora appeared in Forbes Brazil "Under 30" list. She has also been named to the Powerlist 100 by Bantumen (2022) and to the 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics list (2020).