AI Collaborations Series III
Reflections on the use of generative artificial intelligence in higher education, supported by ARU's Centre for Innovation in Higher Education.
Wednesday 29 April 2026, 1-2pm
Scholarship and the zeitgeist of AI-modernity
Online via Teams, sign up via Eventbrite: Scholarship and the zeitgeist of AI-modernity.
First event: Professor Ella McPherson, University of Cambridge.
The zeitgeist of AI-modernity paints familiar techno-utopias. These techno-utopias have antiheros, namely laggards and luddites. In this talk, Ella will unpack these discourses with respect to generative AI and the academy, showing how resistance is not ‘backwardness’ but rather protects the norms of our sector. She'll conclude with a call to AI-luddism.
Email [email protected] for information or register online.
Wednesday 13 May 2026, 1-5pm
Tinkering with a narratology sidekick for storytelling with the writers’ community
In-person ARU Cambridge campus, sign up via Eventbrite: Tinkering with a Narratology Sidekick for Writers’ Community.
Second event: Dr Piotr Mirowski, Senior Staff Research Scientist at Google DeepMind
In this creative writing workshop Dr Piotr Mirowski (Google Deepmind Researcher) will present Fabula, an interactive app for fiction writers built on top of the Gemini language model. Fabula uses detailed narrative plans informed by general narratological theory. Stories are structured hierarchically into scenes and beats, which can in turn be (re)generated and revised at script and story plan level. Using participatory AI, we have been critically evaluating Fabula with writers, employing Fabula as an artefact in critical design. In this workshop, participants are invited to try Fabula as a tool for ideation, feedback on their current work, and interactive storytelling, and to share potentials and concerns about AI tools for writing.
Dr Piotr Mirowski is a Senior Staff Research Scientist at Google DeepMind and a Visiting Researcher at Goldsmiths, University of London. Piotr's research on artificial intelligence has covered reinforcement learning, navigation, weather forecasting, human-machine interaction and computational creativity. Piotr obtained his PhD in computer science in 2011 at New York University supervised by Prof. Yann LeCun (Outstanding Dissertation Award, 2011). Piotr founded and is the director of Improbotics, a theatre company that pioneered live improvised comedy with robots in 2016.
Wednesday 20 May 2026, 1-2pm
Adapting teaching practices for the generative AI era with a focus on innovation and compassion
Online via Teams, sign up via Eventbrite: Teaching in the Generative AI Era: Innovation and Compassion.
Third event: Dr Martin Compton, University of East London.
Martin is the Head of the Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at the University of East London (UEL). Formerly the AI and Innovation in Education Lead at King’s College London, Martin is a leading voice in reimagining pedagogy and assessment for the generative AI era. He is a strong advocate for 'freedom to learn' and compassionate teaching, focusing on how institutions can adapt their practices to meet the challenges of a changing technological landscape.
Email [email protected] for information or register online.
Wednesday 27 May 2026, 1-2pm
Researching young adult attitudes to AI through creative practice methods: a project in development
Fourth event: Dr Sarah Gibson Yates, ARU.
Sarah will focus on her research on young adult attitudes to AI through creative practice methods. She'll discuss the importance of working with this age group, the gaps in the evidence so far and why creative practice is a productive way to critically engage a target group of 18-25 year olds, while also promoting AI literacy.
Email [email protected] for information or register online.
Series co-ordinators:
Dr Sarah Gibson Yates, AHESS, [email protected]
Dr Shaun Le Boutillier, Head of Academic Enhancement, Anglia Learning and Teaching, [email protected]
Nicola Collenette, Communications Manager, Anglia Learning and Teaching, [email protected]
Watch content from our 2025 series II
Our speakers were:
- 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)
- 21 May, Dr Caterina Moruzzi, Edinburgh College of Art
- 4 June, Dr Vassilis Galanos, University of Stirling
- 25 June (rescheduled from 7 May), Kasia Molga, Visual Artist
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
Dr Susan Qu, University of Cambridge, introduced and discussed a positive and inclusive approach to using generative artificial intelligence in early career researchers.
This talk was especially relevant to social science and humanities students who are completing a PhD or post-doctoral career development. The session considered the best use of generative AI for early career researchers’ interview preparation and further topics to empower them in job-seeking.
Please note this event will not be recorded.
Wednesday, 5 March 2025, 1-2pm, online via Teams
Dr Dario Llinares, Consultant and Cinematologist, explored how audio-visual creative practices can engage with technological innovations to analyse, critique, and potentially redefine both the technology itself and its broader impacts.
From a creative research standpoint, AI software offers an opportunity to adopt a mindset of "critical ambivalence". Using this approach, Dario explored 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?
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, explored 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 explored 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.
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, provided 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 explained 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 emphasised the importance of critical thinking by users of GenAI and many of the benefits to students and educators.
Fifth event: 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) considered 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 discussed 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, they explored how Generative AI is being used in multimodal learning in higher education contexts via inquiry graphics and in other ways.
Sixth 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, shared her 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 sixth 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 shared preliminary findings from her CREA-TEC research fellowship, part of the AHRC-funded Bridging Responsible AI Divides UK-Wide programme. She presented 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 highlighted the transformative impact of AI on creative practices. Caterina also talked 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.
Wednesday, 4 June 2025, 1-2pm, online via Teams
About this event
Dr Vassilis Galanos, University of Stirling, offered 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 seventh of a series of events as part of AI Collaborations Series II. Reflections on the use of generative artificial intelligence in Higher Education.
Vassilis reflected 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 were 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.
Eighth event: How to find the soul of a sailor: AI art and memory
Wednesday, 25 June 2025, 1-2pm, online via Teams
About this event
Visual Artist Kasia Molga discussed her deeply personal and innovative project that fuses the past, present, and future through the lens of artificial intelligence and memory.
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.
Kasia used 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.