Rohini Lakshané

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Rohini Lakshané is a technologist, interdisciplinary researcher, and Wikimedian. She serves as a consultant and adviser to businesses and not-for-profit organisations, and is a Fellow at FactorDaily Media Lab.

An engineer by training, Rohini works across technology, policy, and civil liberties, with a focus on research, advocacy, and public-interest technology. Her body of work has addressed gender inequity and violence, access to knowledge, openness, patent reform, diversity and inclusion in technology spaces, and the intersection of gender, sexuality, and the internet.

Rohini received the 15th Laadli Media Award in the English Web Article category in 2025 for her longform article, ‘The crying shame of image-based abuse’ written during her fellowship at FactorDaily. Her earlier longform article, ‘The trouble with being a woman in FOSS’ was part of the ‘Deep Dives—Sexing the Interwebs’ series, which won the South Asian Laadli Media Award for Gender Sensitivity — Web (Best Special Edition) category in 2017.

For her research, she was profiled in the 2019 book ‘31 Fantastic Adventures in Science: Women Scientists in India’. In 2014 and 2015, Rohini served on the jury of The Best of Blogs, an international award honouring excellence in online activism, instituted by the German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle.

Rohini has held several leadership and advisory roles within the Wikimedia movement. She was a Wikimedian-in-Residence (pilot project) in Mumbai (2013), Chairperson of the Gender Gap Special Interest Group of Wikimedia India (2013-14), and a member of the Simple Annual Plan Grants advisory committee (2017-2021).

Previously, Rohini worked as a technology journalist and editor across print and web media, covering human-interest stories and online civil liberties.

You may speak with Rohini in English, Hindi, Marathi, Kannada, Sanskrit, Bengali, Spanish, and Japanese.

Rohini toots @rohini and blogs at Aarohini.

Rohini's Author Page at SSRN

For speaking or teaching engagements, please email first name dot last name at gmail.

IPA transcription of Rohini's full name: roːɦiɳiː ləkʂəɳeː

Name in the Devanagari script: रोहिणी लक्षणे

Pronouns: she/her/hers.

Display picture: Illustration created by Upasana Agarwal for the book 31 Fantastic Adventures in Science.