Making the Sacred: Craft, Ritual, and Computational Imaginaries in Postcolonial HCI
A peer-reviewed paper published at CHI 2026, produced under Dr. Nusrat Jahan Mim's project Urban Heritage and Social Sustainability: Empowering Kolkata's Idol-Makers through Generative Artificial Intelligence, supported by UTIF's Research Catalyst Grant 2025-2026. Drawing on a four-month ethnography in Kumartuli, Kolkata, the study examines how idol-maker communities bring sacred forms into being through devotional craft, challenging secular assumptions in Human-Computer Interaction research