AI Collaborations Series II
Reflections on the use of generative artificial intelligence in higher education, supported by ARU's Centre for Innovation in Higher Education.
Save the dates in 2025, 1-2pm, online via Teams.
Our speakers are:
- 19 February, Dr Susan Qu, University of Cambridge
- 5 March, Dr Dario Llinares, Consultant and Cinematologist
- 19 March, Dr Sarah Gibson Yates, Anglia Ruskin University
- 9 April, Dr Tadhg Blommerde, Northumbria University
- 30 April, Dr Tunde Varga-Atkins, University of Liverpool, Dr Natasa Lackovic, Lancaster University and Dr Run Wen (XJTLU, China)
- 7 May, Kasia Molga, Visual Artist
- 21 May, Dr Caterina Moruzzi, Edinburgh College of Art
- 4 June, Dr Vassilis Galanos, University of Edinburgh
Email [email protected] for further information.
Watch the recordings from 2024's series I.
First event: Empowering early career researchers: AI tools for interview success
Wednesday, 19 February 2025, 1-2pm, online via Teams
About this event
Dr Susan Qu, University of Cambridge, will introduce and discuss a positive and inclusive approach to using generative artificial intelligence in early career researchers.
The first of a series of events as part of AI Collaborations Series II. Reflections on the use of generative artificial intelligence in Higher Education.
This talk will be especially relevant to social science and humanities students who are completing a PhD or post-doctoral career development. The session will consider the best use of generative AI for early career researchers’ interview preparation and further topics to empower them in job-seeking.
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Wednesday, 5 March 2025, 1-2pm, online via Teams
About this event
Dr Dario Linares, Consultant and Cinematologist, will explore how audio-visual creative practices can engage with technological innovations to analyse, critique, and potentially redefine both the technology itself and its broader impacts.
The second of a series of events as part of AI Collaborations Series II. Reflections on the use of generative artificial intelligence in Higher Education.
From a creative research standpoint, AI software offers an opportunity to adopt a mindset of "critical ambivalence". Using this approach, Dr Dario Llinares will explore how audio-visual creative practices can engage with technological innovations to analyse, critique, and potentially redefine both the technology itself and its broader impacts. How might we, as creative practitioners, deploy theoretical and philosophical reflections on originality, interpretation, communication, and human experience, as the relationship between humans and machines continues to evolve?
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Third event: Being the writing human in the Generative AI loop
Wednesday, 19 March 2025, 1-2pm, online via Teams
About this event
Dr Sarah Gibson Yates, Anglia Ruskin University, will explore how creative writers can approach creative writing with artificial intelligence by adopting a critical and playful mindset of experimentation alongside traditional practice skills.
The third of a series of events as part of AI Collaborations Series II. Reflections on the use of generative artificial intelligence in Higher Education.
Writers are rightly sceptical about AI’s tendency towards conformity and plagiarism, with some even describing AI-generated text as theft. In a recent BA-funded project I decided to face the would-be enemy head-on and investigate how AI might be used to support original and radical creative practice in screenwriting. Drawing on insights from a recent British Academy-funded research project I will explore how thinking of myself as the human in the loop with AI's specific strengths and limits, can generate exciting new ways of approaching drafting and revisions.
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Fourth event: Using Generative AI in the classroom
Wednesday, 9 April 2025 1-2pm, online via Teams
About this event
Dr Tadhg Blommerde, Northumbria University, will provide information about assessment design in the age of GenAI and real-world examples of how this technology can improve teaching and student outcomes.
The fourth of a series of events as part of AI Collaborations Series II. Reflections on the use of generative artificial intelligence in Higher Education.
In this session, Tadhg will overview how assessment design can be approached in the age of GenAI, some of the ways that you can use GenAI to improve your teaching, and discuss how critical GenAI literacy could be included in modules that you teach. The session will emphasise the importance of critical thinking by users of GenAI and many of the benefits to students and educators.
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Fifth event: Inquiry graphics: Multimodal learning and the use of Generative AI
Wednesday, 30 April 2025, 1-2pm, online via Teams
About this event
Dr Tünde Varga-Atkins (University of Liverpool), Dr Natasa Lackovic (Lancaster University) and Dr Run Wen (XJTLU, China) will consider how Generative AI is being used in multimodal learning in higher education contexts.
The fifth of a series of events as part of AI Collaborations Series II. Reflections on the use of generative artificial intelligence in Higher Education.
In this session Dr Tünde Varga-Atkins and colleagues will discuss the use of AI in multimodal learning. GenAI is increasingly capable of producing multimodal content, including (but not limited to) text, speech, audio, image or video. Multimodal GenAI can be, and is being, used to create, manipulate, and adapt content and combine different semiotic forms together, to produce multimodal artefacts. During this session, we will explore how Generative AI is being used in multimodal learning in higher education contexts via inquiry graphics and in other ways.
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Sixth event: How to find the soul of a sailor: AI art and memory
Wednesday, 7 May 2025, 1-2pm, online via Teams
About this event
Visual Artist Kasia Molga will discuss her deeply personal and innovative project that fuses the past, present, and future through the lens of artificial intelligence and memory.
The sixth of a series of events as part of AI Collaborations Series II. Reflections on the use of generative artificial intelligence in Higher Education.
Kasia uses the New Real’s specialised experiential AI platform, The New Real Observatory, to reimagine her father’s words, projecting them 50 years into the future. This project is a powerful fusion of memory and technology, blending generative AI tools with climate data to create an emotionally charged narrative that visualises both the past and future of our oceans.
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Seventh event: Responsible AI in creative practices: Insights from the CREA-TEC Fellowship
Wednesday, 21 May 2025, 1-2pm, online via Teams
About this event
Dr Caterina Moruzzi, University of Edinburgh, will share preliminary findings from her CREA-TEC research fellowship, part of the AHRC-funded Bridging Responsible AI Divides UK-Wide programme, highlighting the transformative impact of AI on creative practices.
The seventh of a series of events as part of AI Collaborations Series II. Reflections on the use of generative artificial intelligence in Higher Education.
In this talk, Caterina will share preliminary findings from her CREA-TEC research fellowship, part of the AHRC-funded Bridging Responsible AI Divides UK-Wide programme. She will present insights from a longitudinal study with creative professionals, exploring their use of AI tools across workflow stages, along with their successes, challenges, and aspirations for tool development. The discussion will highlight the transformative impact of AI on creative practices. Caterina will also talk about some early findings from a series of Spring 2025 workshops, focusing on the skills creatives at different career stages need to develop for the responsible integration of AI into their work.
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Wednesday, 4 June 2025, 1-2pm, online via Teams
About this event
Dr Vassilis Galanos, University of Edinburgh, will offer reflections from more than two years of closely engaging with the introduction of generative AI in the classroom and the management of Higher Education.
The eighth of a series of events as part of AI Collaborations Series II. Reflections on the use of generative artificial intelligence in Higher Education.
Vassilis will reflect on more than two years of closely engaging with the introduction of generative AI in the social science classroom and the management of Higher Education, offering insights as to (1) what GenAI can tell us about learning objectives, (2) the status of Higher Education as symptomatic of a metrics-oriented culture, and (3) potential routes for 'otherwising' the academic landscape. These will be done with some help from Karl Marx's Capital, as well as theorisations by Jean Baudrillard, Paul Virilio, and Félix Guattari, offering pathways for an ecological HE that challenges the velocity of educational simulacra, currently expressed in the form of AI hype and proclaimed GenAI adoption rates.