Edinburgh Futures Institute

Edinburgh Reforms: regulatory frameworks for driving growth and competitiveness
2023-10-27 18:00 - 20:30 (Europe/London) | Auditorium, Business School, The University of Edinburgh, 29 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH8 9JS, United Kingdom
In this joint event held with the Edinburgh Centre for Financial Innovations and the Edinburgh Futures Institute, Sheldon Mills, Executive Director, Consumers and Competition at the Financial Conduct Authority will speak on the regulatory issues emanating from the implementation of the UK government’s vision for an internationally competitive and innovative financial services sector in the UK.

On a visit to Edinburgh in December 2022, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, unveiled the ‘Edinburgh Reforms’, a package of policy measures conceived to advance the UK government’s vision for a sustainable, open, technologically advanced, and globally competitive financial services sector. In addition to an ambitious set of proposals to reform the UK system of financial services and markets regulatory architecture, they also include plans for a repeal and replacement of legacy EU financial services legislation, thus potentially leading to further divergence from EU law. Therefore, when fully implemented, the reforms will encapsulate the most significant change to financial services and markets regulation in the UK since the introduction of the Financial Services and Markets Act in 2000.

The Financial Conduct Authority plays a central role in the delivery of the Edinburgh Reforms, a point underscored by the issuance of new remit letters to it and the Prudential Regulation Authority by Mr Hunt one day ahead of the unveiling of the reforms; the letter to the FCA sets out “clear, (and) targeted recommendations”on how the Financial Conduct Authority may support the government’s objectives on economic growth and international competitiveness of the UK.

In this public lecture, Sheldon Mills, Executive Director, Consumers and Competition at the Financial Conduct Authority will address these issues in the context of the Financial Conduct Authority’s primary objectives of protecting consumers from bad conduct, protecting the integrity of the UK financial system, and promoting effective competition in the interests of consumers.

The event will be chaired by Professor Gbenga Ibikunle, Chair of Finance and Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Financial Innovations.

Black History Month: Leaning into the Meta-Physics of Liberation
2023-10-27 18:00 - 19:30 | Inspace, 1 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH8 9LE, United Kingdom
This Black History Month event will take on a long-discussed topic in the Black and Afrocentric movements across the world: the challenged idea and risks of leadership. The panel will explore different contexts in which Black people have made expressions of change and strategic collective work towards anti- and de-colonial liberations.

This event was programmed in collaboration with RACE.ED.

Important notice: This event will be photographed/recorded, and images may be used for future marketing, promotional or archive purposes. If you would prefer not to be photographed, please let us know at the event.

Speaker Biographies

Tiffany Holloman

Dr. Tiffany R. Holloman, FRSA is the project manager for Brad-ATTIAN and YCEDE in the Centre for Inclusion and Diversity at the University of Bradford. She is co-founder and co-director of Same Skies Think Tank, as well as a consulting lecturer at RADA in early modern history. Her sociological research examines race and education in the UK and US and her historical research investigates King James VI&I in Early Modern Britain. She is the author of several articles, chapters, as well as a co-editor of two books. Her activism stems from a desire to work with community members in the elevation of human development.

Phoenix Nacto

Phoenix Nacto – Traore is currently the Research Impact Officer at the University of Huddersfield’s School of Arts and Humanities. Phoenix’s academic journey has seen her deeply engaged in advancing the understanding of underrepresented narratives. Her insights contribute to fields such as Black Queer Theory, Black Feminist Decolonial Thought, and Popular Culture. With a B.A in Women’s Studies from Spelman College (U.S) and an M.A in Gender and International Development from the University of East Anglia (U.K), Phoenix integrates academic insight into her dedication, effectively wielding the power of storytelling and theory through poetry. This approach fosters innovation in her work that reaches far beyond traditional academia.

Sharon Anyiam

Sharon is a passionate Lecturer pursuing a PhD in Sociology, her research delves into contemporary Black activism, investigating millennial narratives of criminalization and resistance. Her academic passions intersect at the crossroads of race/ethnicity, (anti)racism, and social justice, unravelling intricate intersections within these domains.

Beyond academia, Sharon’s journey extends into community organizing, where she has a rich background as a community facilitator. Engaging in grassroots anti-racist campaigns on local, regional, and global levels, she collaborates with activists and researchers globally, including the United States, Brazil, and Kenya. Currently certifying as a Doula, she advocates for maternal health in marginalised groups, embodying her commitment to community well-being. Sharon’s commitment extends beyond her professional pursuits. As a mother to young children, she is dedicated to fostering meaningful dialogues and spaces for early engagement with social justice thought and practices. This drive led to her co-founding Cultivate—an anti-racist agency providing targeted impactful training, workshops, and consultations for individuals and organisation closely interacting with young children. Sharon’s fusion of academic prowess and community-driven activism exemplifies the potential for transformative change through research and community building

Dimah Mahmoud

Dr. Dimah Mahmoud is a humanist by practice, actionist by choice, and passionate change-maker by learning. Dimah uses her words – written & spoken – as sacred medicine drawing on the HER in HERitage to activate the EYE in Collect-i-ve. With 15+ years of facilitating order by manipulating chaos, she excels at co-creating grassroot sustainable solutions by leveraging knowledge, skills and expertise to build alliances for inclusive collective growth with a deliberate focus on the holistic liberation of people of African and Indigenous Ancestry. Dimah holds a PhD in Sudanese Foreign Policy and international legitimacy from the University of Exeter.

Katucha Bento (chair)

Dr Katucha Bento is a Lecturer in Race and Decolonial Studies, Co-Director of Race.ED Network at the University of Edinburgh, and the co-founder of the Free Afro-Brazilian University (UNAFRO). She is associate editor of the journal “Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power”. Her main inspirations are in quilombo and samba communities’ epistemologies and praxis, reaching out to Black feminists and Queer subversive language to promote ethics of caring and power to the people.

The Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas
2023-10-25 20:30 - 22:00 | The Stand Comedy Club, 5 York Place, Edinburgh, EH1 3EB, United Kingdom
Take three top academics, some dangerous ideas, add one comedian and it’s the force of nature that is the Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas (CODI). Hosted by comedian Susan Morrison, and now in its eleventh year, CODI is ninety minutes of rapid-fire research from some of the finest minds in the country.

You can’t search Google for poetry

It’s true! Every word you search for on Google is auctioned to the highest bidder, but it’s the commercial rather than poetic value of the word that determines the results you see. Artist and researcher Dr Pip Thornton (The University of Edinburgh) explores what words are worth to Google, to you, and why it matters.

Everyone lies to us

Politicians, advertisers, social media: everyone is lying to us. Worse, sometimes they’re not exactly lying, but they’re misleading us and we’d really like to explain how. Linguistics, for once in its miserable existence, can help. Dr Chris Cummins (The University of Edinburgh) explains how we can use ideas about communication to measure how misleading a statement is, and how trusting, or suspicious, we need to be in order to get a clear picture of what’s actually going on.

Stop Being Disciplined!

How can we respond to an increasingly complex and challenging world? Can we stop playing by the rules? We need playful, messy, and unpredictable spaces where new approaches can be developed. Dr David Overend (The University of Edinburgh) explores a series of wild and weird experiments with artists, scientists and geographers; then asks some difficult questions about how we should work together, share ideas and respond to the big challenges facing our world today. Can we all become a bit less disciplined?

CODI is curated by the University of Edinburgh as part of Beltane Public Engagement Network and produced by Fair Pley.

Seizing the Means of Computation with Cory Doctorow
2023-10-25 18:00 - 19:00 | Online, Edinburgh
We are delighted to be hosting Cory Doctorow in conversation with Morgan Meaker about his book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation.

When the tech platforms promised a future of “connection,” they were lying. They said their “walled gardens” would keep us safe, but those were prison walls.

Locked into their systems by design, we are held hostage by Twitter, Facebook and other Big Tech platforms who threaten us with lost connection if we delete our accounts.

The solution is simple: interoperability (a dirty word in Silicon Valley). Interoperability will tear down the walls between technologies, allowing users leave platforms, remix their media, and reconfigure their devices without corporate permission. Interoperability is the only route to the rapid and enduring annihilation of the platforms. The Internet Con is the disassembly manual we need to take back our internet.

Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist and journalist. He is the author of many books, nonfiction and fiction, and in 2020 he was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. He works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is a MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate, is a Visiting Professor of Computer Science at Open University, a Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of North Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group.

Gina Helfrich

Dr. Gina Helfrich is Baillie Gifford Programme Manager for the Centre for Technomoral Futures at Edinburgh Futures Institute, University of Edinburgh. Previously, she served as Senior Program Officer for Global Technology at Internews, where she managed global technology programs to promote and protect Internet Freedom and digital rights. Dr. Helfrich has spent the bulk of her career working to make technology better serve the needs of historically marginalised and at-risk people. She holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Emory University with a specialisation in ethics and women’s and gender studies.

FutureGaze: The Future of Creative Inclusion
2023-10-25 12:00 - 13:00 | Online, Edinburgh
FutureGaze is a lunchtime series brought to you by Creative Edinburgh, providing time out to reflect and gaze into the future of the creative industries.

In conversation with Caroline Parkinson, we welcome creative leaders who have innovated and led significant changes in their creative business, organisation, artistic or academic practice over the past year to share what the future looks like for them – and for the creative and cultural sector.

Join us as we collectively gaze into the future of the creative and cultural sector, stimulate ideas for your creative future, and get inspired to strive towards it.

Not a member of Creative Edinburgh yet? It’s free to join click here.

By registering to our events you will automatically be given a free Creative Edinburgh Core membership. You can cancel this at any time. You will not be able to attend our events unless you are on a Creative Edinburgh membership package including Core.

What does FutureGaze explore?

From new ways of exploring creative investments to new ways of measuring creative impact, FutureGaze will cover a range of themes in 2023 aimed at creative freelancers, sole traders, and businesses.

Joined by a line-up from across the creative industries, Caroline will delve into the challenges and opportunities, the shifts in thinking and practice they have made over the past couple of years and explore what’s been learned through these changes.

We will reflect on the changing landscape facing the creative industries and look to the future to consider how the creative and cultural sector may need to adapt in order to sustain, maximise potential through innovation and thrive.

October’s Discussion: The Future of Creative Inclusion

Creativity thrives on a diversity of voices, perspectives, and experiences, and we in the creative and cultural sector work towards widening access, inclusion and diversity in our industry and representation in the creative work produced.

How are we doing as a sector in achieving a positive difference, and tackling the challenges to achieving greater diversity and inclusion?

What are our strategies for equality, diversity, inclusion and access? How successful have been the initiatives we have designed? Is there a greater need to share our learning and our initiatives that have worked even in part, so we can widen access, reduce obstacles, improve opportunity and achieve our aims?

In this FutureGaze our speakers will explore these questions, and share what they have learned from their experiences and challenges, with examples of strategies and initiatives that have achieved a positive difference.

About our Guests

Nicola Osborne

Nicola Osborne is Manager of the Institute for Design Informatics, at The University of Edinburgh and Programme Manager for the Creative Informatics Cluster programme, sited within the Institute. She authored the Equalities, Diversity and Inclusion policy for the programme, and co-authored the ethics guidance, and regularly works with SMEs to ensure their innovative work is inclusive and ethically grounded.

She has also contributed social media expertise to UK and EU research projects and through consultancy with clients including, the British HIV Association, NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde, and Asthma UK.

M﻿elanie Hoyes

Having completed postgraduate studies and teaching film and TV at undergraduate level, the BFI has given Mel the opportunity to use these skills in a contemporary industry context. She completed a BFI research project to historically map ethnic diversity in onscreen representation in UK film for the Black Star season at the BFI Southbank in 2016, ground-breaking research and data methodology which was written up in a piece and Sight & Sound Magazine and an academic collection of essays called Black Film, British Cinema II. In her role as Head of Inclusion at the BFI, Melanie advocates for increased access and equity in the UK film sector as well as consulting and collaborating with global partners to embed diversity and inclusion into policy and practice.

She also sits on various Boards and committees and is the Europe Council Lead for the Geena Davis Institute and co-editor of the Black Film Bulletin section in Sight and Sound magazine.

About our host

Caroline Parkinson

Caroline is Sector Engagement Manager for the Creative Industries and Director of Creative for the Edinburgh Futures Institute having previously developed the sector plan and white paper for the creative industries for the Data-Driven Innovation Programme within the University of Edinburgh. Prior to this from 2014 to 2018 she provided consultancy in the creative industries specialising in business development, innovation and skills, latterly completing a 2-year contract to stimulate innovation in creative industries with Interface. From 2010 to 2014 she was Director of Film, TV, Music, Creative Industries, Skills & Innovation for the newly formed Creative Scotland, and prior to that from 2005 to 2010 she was Director, Scotland & Northern Ireland for the new sector skills association, Creative & Cultural Skills.

Her early creative life included ballet and rhythmic gymnastics, fashion, singing in bands for over 30 years, and photography, becoming a professional photographer in 1999.

She serves on the Board of Architecture & Design Scotland, and until recently served on the board of the Scottish Music Industry Association, and for four years has served in a voluntary capacity as Strategic Director and Presenter of the MOVE Summit, Scotland’s Animation and VFX Gathering.

Handing Over Control with David Runciman
2023-10-20 18:00 - 19:00 | Playfair Library Hall, Old College, South Bridge, Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH8 9YL, United Kingdom
‘The Singularity’ is what Silicon Valley calls the idea that, eventually, we will be overrun by machines that are able to take decisions and act for themselves. What no one says is that it happened before. A few hundred years ago, humans started building the robots that now rule our world. They are called states and corporations: immensely powerful artificial entities, with capacities that go far beyond what any individual can do, and which, unlike us, need never die. They have made us richer, safer and healthier than would have seemed possible even a few generations ago – and they may yet destroy us.

Join Professor David Runciman in conversation with Professor Shannon Vallor about his latest book, The Handover, which distills over three hundred years of thinking about how to live with artificial agency.

Please note this is a hybrid event.

Important notice: This event will be photographed/recorded, and images may be used for future marketing, promotional or archive purposes. If you would prefer not to be photographed, please let us know at the event.

David Runciman

David Runciman is Professor of Politics at Cambridge University and the former Head of the Department of Politics and International Studies. His books include Where Power Stops, How Democracy Ends, and The Confidence Trap. He writes regularly for the London Review of Books. He hosted the widely acclaimed weekly podcast Talking Politics and now hosts the weekly podcast Past Present Future.

Shannon Vallor (chair)

Shannon Vallor is the Baillie Gifford Professor in the Ethics of Data and Artificial Intelligence in the University of Edinburgh’s School of Philosophy. She directs the Centre for Technomoral Futures in the Edinburgh Futures Institute and co-directs the AHRC’s BRAID (Bridging Responsible AI Divides) programme. She is also a Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute. Professor Vallor’s research explores how emerging technologies reshape human moral and intellectual character, and maps the ethical challenges and opportunities posed by new uses of data and artificial intelligence. Her work includes advising academia, government and industry on the ethical design and use of AI.

Music-making beyond the classroom
2023-10-17 13:00 - 14:00 | Online, Edinburgh
I﻿n collaboration with the Binks Hub as part of the UNESCO Week of Sound

Music can benefit young people in far reaching ways. Not only can it enable young people to learn new skills, but it can support their well-being by creating opportunities for self-expression, collaboration and belonging.

Research has found music to be especially positive for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. In spite of this, there are widening inequalities in the provision of and access to music-making.

Such concerns have been heightened in the context of ongoing public sector cuts, and the resultant music education budgets in schools.

In this online seminar, we invite you to join community practitioners and researchers involved in music and music-making in settings outside of the classroom.

Part celebration, part call for action, it will showcase the wealth and energy of music initiatives working with, and for, young people.

By making instruments and music education available to all young people, deliberately bringing sound into unexpected places and social groups, and challenging the rules around music-making, these initiatives show how valuable, and how valued music is both to young people and the communities they are part of.

Speakers:

Emma Davidson (Co-Director, Binks Hub)

Jed Milroy (Assistant Director at the Tinderbox Collective)

Ryan McGlone (Manager, Grantown Youth Centre)

Katie Hunter (Research Fellow, Strathclyde University)

The sounds of feeling well, feeling cared for
2023-10-17 12:00 - 13:00 | Online, Edinburgh
I﻿n collaboration with the Binks Hub as part of the UNESCO Week of Sound

In this seminar, we will share the findings of a co-creative research project which explored understandings of mental health for care-experienced people in order to develop an innovative training for residential workers.

The seminar will share some of the findings of the project and also explore the importance of sound in the training resources we created. The seminar will include experts-by-experience alongside academics and a sound artist.

A panel discussion with Dr Christina Mcmellon, Dr Pearse McCusker, Michael Begg, Thomas Bartlett, and Dr Autumn Roesch-Marsh.

Sounding the Ice Factory
2023-10-17 11:00 - 12:00 | West Court, Edinburgh College of Art, 74 Lauriston Place, Edinburgh, EH3 9DF
Michael Begg, representing work undertaken with People Ocean Planet, Marine Alliance of science and Technology, Scottish Association for Marine Sciences, Creative Informatics, Blue Action EU, European Marine Board, and research scientists based at AWI, European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting, Hokkaido University Institute for Low Temperature Science.

Further Details

Between 2021 and 2023 sound artist Michael Begg completed composer residencies with the Ocean ARTic Partnership and the European Marine Board. Working in collaboration with climate scientists and researchers, the residencies sought to use music built around research data to increase public awareness and engagement with the complexity and fragility of our polar regions as they struggled with climate change.

Using innovative technology and composing techniques that transformed data into sound, new forms of musical expression were realised that spoke to an audience’s own growing anxiety surrounding climate change. But these data compositions provided both a cathartic release for the scientists, and suggested new perspectives around which to consider the structure and representation of their work. As one researcher remarked, “I found the music fascinating but also surprisingly stressful – being able to hear environmental change is quite an emotional experience.”

Beginning with the proposal that in the 21st century data has become the common vocabulary of science and art, Michael describes the processes through which he arrives at his compositions, considers the differences between data sonification and data composition, and invites discussion around what value or insight may be revealed through consideration of sound and music in research activity. He will also explore solastalgia, the acute anxiety arising from living through climate change, and what these new forms of musical expression may contribute to addressing that condition for listeners, and for researchers.

Edinburgh Futures Conversations: A Performance
2023-10-13 18:00 - 19:30 | Inspace, 1 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH8 9LE, United Kingdom
This performance is part of our Futures Conversations series on the Future of Leadership.

How does activism function beyond emergency? What does it take to work collectively towards a better future? Who/what should the “legislators of the world” “look to […] for guidance”? Through animal stories, crowdsourced autobiographies, works by women and nonbinary writers of colour, this poetry and music collaboration will explore the emotional structure of alternative organisations.

Please note this is a hybrid event. Streaming will be live captioned.

Important notice: This event will be photographed/recorded, and images may be used for future marketing, promotional or archive purposes. If you would prefer not to be photographed, please let us know at the event.

Pippa Murphy

Pippa Murphy is an award-winning composer and sound designer known for combining orchestras, singers and instrumentalists with ambient soundscapes, electronic music and creating bespoke sound palettes. She works with writers, film-makers and choreographers as well as Folk, Jazz and Classical musicians. Pippa is known for her stylistic breadth, depth, and originality, as well as a unique cross-disciplinary understanding of storytelling and creative collaboration. Pippa’s works are multi-layered and multi-sensory. She is particularly interested in vocal techniques, phonemes and ‘found’ sound.

Tim Tim Cheng

Tim Tim Cheng is a poet from Hong Kong, currently based between Edinburgh and London. Her pamphlet Tapping At Glass (VERVE, 2023) explores womanhood, multilingualism, and psychogeography. Her poems are published or anthologised in POETRY, The Rialto, Poetry London, Our Time Is A Garden, and elsewhere. Her latest appearances include the StAnza Festival, Hidden Door festival, Singapore Writers Festival, and BBC Scotland. She is a WrICE fellow (awarded by RMIT University), an Ignite fellow (Scottish Book Trust), a member of Southbank Centre’s New Poets Collective 2022/23, and a mentee under the Roddy Lumsden Memorial Mentorship scheme.

Patrick Errington (chair)

Patrick James Errington is a Scottish-Canadian poet, translator, and interdisciplinary researcher. His poems have won numerous awards, including the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award from the Writers’ Trust of Canada and the Poetry International Prize; they appear in journals and anthologies worldwide as well as in the chapbooks, Glean and Field Studies, and in the recent collection the swailing (McGill-Queens University Press, 2023). As a translator, Patrick has brough the poetry of singer-songwriter PJ Harvey into French, and is currently translating works by the French-Algerian poet and painter Hamid Tibouchi and the French-Romanian philosopher E.M. Cioran into English. Originally from Alberta, Canada, Patrick now lives in Scotland where he’s a Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh and an affiliate of the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH), teaching and researching across fields like literature, creative writing, translation, and cognitive psychology.

Edinburgh Futures Conversations: The Future of Leadership
2023-10-12 18:00 - 20:00 | McEwan Hall, Teviot Place, Edinburgh, EH8 9AG, United Kingdom
There is a distinction between leaders and leadership. The former conjures up the image of a single figure, a command-and-control top-down approach. The latter is broader and acknowledges different types of leadership. In the case of both leaders and leadership, there is a focus on powers, resources, and institutional parameters, but also on the traits or the characteristics required for good leadership.

In recent turbulent times with polycrises, wicked and super wicked problems, there has been an emphasis on dealing with crises and long-term planning, both evident in demands of leadership during the recent pandemic. In the polycrises we are living, through current leadership strategies, of which there are many, we are grappling with problems of a magnitude and complexity not anticipated when some of these theories were first advanced. The combination of planetary, societal, health and economic challenges means that our future will be quite different from our past.

There has been much analysis and discussion of leadership in various settings and for different purposes, but less effort to learn from and engage with this variety. As so often, our understanding is siloed. Honest and open debate – notably including failed leadership – that draws on this vast experience would allow us to learn across disciplines and settings.

Our Futures Conversation seeks to explore what future leadership could look like. It will most likely be less about designing new theories, or developing new strategic approaches than putting into place plumblines that resonate with the global commons – the ambitions of the Sustainable Development Goals of a world where people and planet can thrive. These plumblines may well be around transparency, engagement, inclusion, trust, and purpose. How do leaders who bring about wholescale paradigm change bring others with them? What do we know of leaders who have created stability in periods of chaos, or leaders who have called out corruption which has been so embedded in the fabric of systems or cloaked in power that it is either invisible, or unbreakable?

Please note this is a hybrid event. Streaming will be live captioned.

Important notice: This event will be photographed/recorded, and images may be used for future marketing, promotional or archive purposes. If you would prefer not to be photographed, please let us know at the event.

Panelists

Alicia Garza

Alicia Garza is an innovator, strategist and organizer. She is the Principal at Black Futures Lab, co-creator of #BlackLivesMatter and Black Lives Matter Global Network, Senior Advisor to the President at National Domestic Workers Alliance, Senior Advisor at Care in Action, co-founder of Supermajority and host of the podcast Lady Don’t Take No.

Elif Shafak

Elif Shafak is an award-winning British-Turkish novelist. She has published 19 books, 12 of which are novels, including her latest The Island of Missing Trees, shortlisted for the Costa Award, British Book Awards, RSL Ondaatje Prize and Women’s Prize for Fiction. She is a bestselling author in many countries around the world and her work has been translated into 57 languages. 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and RSL Ondaatje Prize; and was Blackwell’s Book of the Year. Shafak holds a PhD in political science and she has taught at various universities in Turkey, the US and the UK, including St Anne’s College, Oxford University, where she is an honorary fellow. She also holds a Doctorate of Humane Letters from Bard College.

Maja Göpel

Dr Maja Göpel is a political economist and an important voice for a sustainable transformation of society, working at the intersection of the economy, politics, and society. From 2017 to 2020, she was secretary-general of the German Advisory Council on Global Change, and in 2019 was appointed honorary professor at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg. She is a member of the Club of Rome, the World Future Council, the Balaton Group, the German government’s Bioeconomy Council, and a co-initiator of the Scientists for Future network. She is the author of Rethinking Our World: an invitation to rescue our future.

Talat Yaqoob

Talat Yaqoob is a consultant providing research, strategy, and public participation expertise. She specialises on equalities issues, particularly on women’s equality, anti-racism, and intersecting inequalities. She is an award-winning campaigner and co-founder of the campaign group Women 50:50, advocating for fair representation of women in politics and the founder of Pass the Mic which exists to amplify the voices of women of colour and challenge media content. She is also the co-chair of the First Minister’s National Advisory Council on Women and Girls. Talat is a public speaker, writer, and commentator across media on equalities issues, politics and current affairs.

Gavin Esler (chair)

Gavin Esler is a journalist, television presenter and author. He was the main presenter of the BBC current affairs show Newsnight for 12 years until 2014. Since 2014, he has been a public speaker, a political commentator and journalist, and the Chancellor of the University of Kent. His upcoming book, Britain is Better Than This, is an exploration of a British political system in peril and what we must do to save it.

Citizens Data Agency Event Series – What mobilises people against Big-Tech?
2023-10-11 18:00 - 19:00 | Online, Edinburgh
Join us for the first Citizens Data Agency public event with Dr. Elinor Carmi, who will share her latest research report titled “What mobilises people against Big-Tech?”. This report builds on previous research with colleagues at Liverpool University that argues that contrary to arguments about people’s resignation and cynicism about their privacy and digital rights, they found that people do care but do not know what to do about it. This new report asks digital rights NGO practitioners to share their experience around campaigns with different communities – what worked, what did not work and how can we move forward to challenge the power asymmetries we have with Big-Tech.

R﻿ead the report: https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/31373/

Speaker Profile:

Dr. Elinor Carmi is a Senior Lecturer in Data Politics and Social Justice at the Sociology & Criminology Department at City University, London, UK. Dr. Carmi is a digital rights advocate, feminist, researcher and journalist who has been working, writing and teaching on data politics, data literacies, feminist approaches to media and data, data justice and internet governance. Currently Dr. Carmi is a POST Parliamentary Academic Fellowship working with the UK’s Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) Committee on the project she proposed: “Digital literacies for a healthy democracy”. She also works on the Nuffield Foundation project “Developing a Minimum Digital Living Standard”. Dr. Carmi’s work contributes to emerging debates in academia, policy, health organisations and digital activism. She gave evidence on Digital Literacy for the House of Lords Committee on Democracy and Digital Technologies. In 2020, Dr. Carmi was invited by the World Health Organization (WHO) as an expert on data literacy and disinformation to the first scientific discussion on infodemiology.

Website – https://elinorcarmi.com/

The event will be held online, please register to receive a link to join. There will be a 30 minute talk with a discussion and Q&A afterwards.

*Please note the event will be recorded*

About Citizens Data Agency

The Citizens Data Agency research project is running monthly public events exploring data, citizen-led privacy, the impact of emerging technologies on citizens’ data and alternative data governance. We hope the events will be an opportunity to explore these topics through inspiring projects and be an opportunity to learn more about how citizens can be empowered to protect their privacy and data. The events are free to attend and open to everyone.

Website – www.citizensdataagency.co.uk

Human-Centric Finance
2023-10-09 09:30 - 11:30 | Inspace, 1 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH8 9LE, United Kingdom
Fintech companies are constantly innovating and developing new products and services. However, while many of the technological solutions are user-centred, they are not necessarily human-centred. They typically focus on process, user experience and scalability, but often neglect the deeper needs, emotions, instincts, and social factors that impact people’s financial wellbeing. This event challenges fintech leaders to think about their products at a deeper level, through a human-centred lens. Please join us for a very insightful programme.

Speaker Biographies

Dr Thomas Mathar, AegonThomas is an internationally experienced customer and behaviour researcher. He currently leads initiatives at Aegon’s Centre for Behavioural Research, with a focus on identifying tools, techniques, rules-of-thumb and other interventions that help people make better long-term decisions. Thomas’s book, “Financial Wellbeing”, has recently been published, bringing to the German-speaking world the Money and Mindset concept that he helped to develop at Aegon UK more than 3 years ago.

Professor Tina Harrison, University of EdinburghTina is Professor of Financial Services Marketing and Consumption. Her research interests are in the areas of financial wellbeing, consumer use and understanding of financial services, and the use of technology in enabling and empowering financial capability and financial wellbeing. Tina’s recent projects have focused on young people’s financial capability and school-based financial education in collaboration with Young Enterprise and the Money and Pensions Service and. She recently collaborated with Sopra Steria to develop a tool to support financially vulnerable individuals.Tina and Thomas are leading a two-year Innovate UK KTP funded project, a partnership between the University of Edinburgh and Aegon UK, to develop a tool to enable longer term planning and saving.

Creative Informatics Innovation Showcase 2023
2023-09-28 08:30 - 2023-09-29 17:00 | Central Hall, 2 West Tollcross, Edinburgh, EH3 9BP
The Creative Informatics Innovation Showcase is an exciting two-day hybrid event and exhibition to explore how data-driven innovation is changing the world around us. Taking place at Central Hall in Edinburgh, and streaming online, we’ll be joined by inspirational leaders in the creative industries for thought-provoking panels, in-depth conversations and special performances.

Throughout the Innovation Showcase, there will be opportunities to explore and experience some of the creative products supported by Creative Informatics in an interactive exhibition, curated by Stacey Hunter (Local Heroes).

Join us to celebrate the visionary people and groundbreaking projects that have been part of, and inspired, the Creative Informatics programme over the past five years.

This event is free to attend with food and refreshments provided.

Thursday 28 September: Investment, Innovation, Impact

Day one explores the impact of the Creative Industries Clusters Programme with guests from across the network. We’ll hear from some inspiring creatives about how they took their businesses from idea, through investment, to in-the-world. We’ll explore some amazing examples of social impact from Creative Informatics-funded projects that show how small companies can create far reaching change and we’ll also be highlighting some exciting new opportunities for those working in virtual production while exploring the potential of AI for creatives.

Thursday will close with a discussion and performance from singer and producer Chagall. In Unlocked, Chagall blends live vocals with a stunning interactive light-art installation, bringing captivating physicality and human intimacy to electronic music.

B﻿rowse the full line up for Thursday 28 September.

Friday 29 September: Powering Creative Connections

Day two is all about making connections. We have inspirational keynotes from creators and curators, and we’ll hearing from some incredible organisations who are supporting creatives through community networks. We’ll be looking at how data can be used to broaden access to creative work, and chatting to practitioners who are making a big impact through sustainable practice and the disruption of traditional supply models.

We’ll be finishing the day with a special appearance from award-winning recording artist and technology innovator, Imogen Heap, in conversation with broadcaster, author and activist Gemma Cairney, followed by a drinks reception.

B﻿rowse the full line up for Friday 29 September.

The Violence Prevention Forum: A Dialogical Approach to Multi-Sectoral Engagement to Prevent Violence in South Africa
2023-09-27 11:30 - 13:00 | Room G.07, Informatics Forum, The University of Edinburgh, 10 Crichton Street, Newington, Edinburgh, EH8 9AB, United Kingdom
We are very pleased to extend an invitation to you to join us for a talk by Dr Chandré Gould, hosted by the Edinburgh Futures Institute in partnership with Moray House College of Education. Chandré is a senior research fellow in the Justice and Violence Prevention Programme at the Institute for Security Studies in South Africa. She has thirty years of research and advocacy experience addressing all forms of violence and its prevention. Since 2015, Chandré has convened and led the Violence Prevention Forum, a national dialogue platform for researchers, government officials, development partners, the private sector and NGOs to develop a sustainable basis for using and generating evidence to inform the prevention of violence in South Africa. The collaborative and multi-sectoral approach to violence prevention is very relevant to those working and studying in fields such as public policy, public health, justice and policing, and will have resonance with anyone seeking to understand how a collective undertaking and long-term partnership is utilised to address a significant societal challenge.

Guest speaker

Dr Chandré Gould, Institute for Security Studies, South Africa

Convener of the Violence Prevention Forum (www.violence-prevention.org). Author and editor of books and numerous papers on crime and criminal justice in South Africa; biological weapons control; South Africa’s apartheid chemical and biological weapons programme; small arms control and human trafficking.

Linkedin

Programme

11:20 -11:30 Tea and coffee on arrival11:30 -13:00WelcomePresentation by Dr Chandré GouldCollective discussion13:00Close

Doors Open Day at South College Street
2023-09-24 12:00 - 16:00 | South College Street, 13-15 South College Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AA
The South College Street building is currently home to Edinburgh Futures Institute and the Data Driven Innovation (DDI) initiative. However, prior to becoming a place of study and work, for nearly 200 years it was a site of worship and, before that, a bowling green.

Come and find out more about the history of the site and its various activities since 1742 – several of which have been ‘firsts’ for Edinburgh! There will be displays, presentations and a self-guided tour.

During the self-led tour, you will learn about the building’s history, and the activities that currently happen here – in particular, the work of Edinburgh Futures Institute and Data Driven Innovations. Throughout the building, you will discover 21 labelled stops that all together tell a diverse story of the building. Try to find all the stops while you wander around!

Throughout the day we will also host a series of lightning talks in the Newhaven Lecture Theatre on the 3rd floor, during which you can learn more about Edinburgh Futures Institute and city region Data Driven Innovation programme, as well as about the history of Relief Churches in Edinburgh.

Visitors will have a chance to find out about the building’s history and how the successive changes in the churches based in South College Street have been linked with the changes and disagreements which affected the 18th and 19th century church in Scotland. Information about the University’s projects currently based in the building and the Edinburgh & South East Scotland City Region Deal will also be available. Visitors will also be able to find out more about the Edinburgh Futures Institute’s plans for the former Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh site on Lauriston Place.

This event is unticketed, the running order of the day can be found below:

12:00 Showreel – Short films and animations from University of Edinburgh teams based in the building.

12:30 City Region Deal – Celebrating 5 years of the City Region Deal for Edinburgh & South East Scotland. We share progress and projects that are already making a real impact in our region.

12:45 Data-Driven Innovation – Hear all about this innovation network helping organisations tackle challenges for industry and society, by doing data right and supporting Edinburgh to become the data capital of Europe.

1:00 History of Relief Churches in Edinburgh – Dr Alasdair Raffe, Senior Lecturer in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology will speak about this fascinating aspect of church history in Edinburgh

1:30 Recycling a Hospital – As the former Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh transitions to a new life as the Edinburgh Futures Institute, Dr Jimmy Turner shares a project which is giving old materials new life and contributing to the physical and symbolic transformation of the building, ensuring the memories of those connected with the building are not forgotten.

1:45 Showreel – Short films and animations from University of Edinburgh teams based in the building.

2:00 History of Relief Churches in Edinburgh – Dr Alasdair Raffe, Senior Lecturer in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology will speak about this fascinating aspect of church history in Edinburgh.

2:20 Edinburgh Futures Institute: Past, Present and Future – Join EFI’s Director of Culture & Community for a short talk on the history of the former Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh and the redevelopment project that is breathing life into this beloved Edinburgh building to create the Edinburgh Futures Institute.

2.40 Scottish Stained Glass Trust – We welcome members of the Scottish Stained Glass Trust which is dedicated to the art of stained glass in all forms. Hear about their work to record inventories of stained glass and the creation of an online database of stained glass in Scotland.

3:00 Showreel – Short films and animations from University of Edinburgh teams based in the building.

Links

Blog listing on South College Street project and history by Gintare Kulyte: https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/southcollegestreet/

University of Edinburgh Doors Open Day: https://www.ed.ac.uk/local/news/doors-open-day-2023-dod

Edinburgh Doors Open Day: https://www.doorsopendays.org.uk/places/?area=7511

Artificial Intelligence in Publishing
2023-09-22 12:00 - 13:30 | Online, Edinburgh
Join us for a free online training event exploring the rapidly evolving role of artificial intelligence in the publishing industry. Looking at real-life case studies, the session will delve into the latest research on the use and impact of AI on content creation and engagement.

Hear from Caroline Parkinson, Director of Creative for the Edinburgh Futures Institute, in conversation with Dr Bronwyn Jones – a scholar and practitioner who works as a journalist for the BBC and researches the role of artificial intelligence (AI), algorithms, and automation in news production at the University of Edinburgh – and Burkhard Schafer, Professor of Computational Legal Theory who researches the interactions between law, science, and computer technology from doctrinal, comparative, and legal-theoretical perspectives.

The event will take place on Zoom and include time for audience questions and discussion.

Economics of Financial Technology Conference
2023-06-21 08:00 - 2023-06-23 17:00 | Scotland
https://www.eftconference.business-school.ed.ac.uk/

Text & Data Analysis SUMMER SCHOOL 2023
2023-06-05 00:00 - 2023-06-09 23:59 | Scotland
The Centre for Data, Culture & Society Summer School is an intensive, 5-day, in-person event, with a heavy practical focus. It consists of two simultaneously run streams: A Gentle Introduction to Coding for Data Analysis, and Text and Data Analysis in the Wild. Find out more about each stream and which best suits your needs below.

More information and booking

The New Real Salon: Exploring the Future of AI and the Arts
2023-05-05 19:00 - 21:00 | Inspace, 1 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH8 9LE, United Kingdom
Join us for the opening of the second New Real Salon, which kicks off a series of events across the weekend of 5-7 May 2023:

The New Real Expose: The Algorithmic Turn (ticketed, 5 May 2023, 7-9pm, Inspace)

This event brings to light the relationship between the artist and AI technology. At times of upheaval, artists are at the forefront, helping to illuminate the ways emerging technology impacts on life at a profound level. The New Real’s research themes look to reimagine interactions between humans and machines, increase accessibility and interpretability for artists, and foster transformative intelligent experiences for audiences.

The New Real’s research team and our newly commissioned artist will present insights into what is happening in this area and new work currently in development using The New Real Observatory Platform, an unboxed AI tool created with and for artists. This tool provides artists with access to directly manipulate a model, in order to enable profound artistic experiments with AI. We believe this can lead to better art, and also provides a basis to probe and question urgent issues of today.

The New Real Hackathon: Turning the Algorithm (drop-in, Inspace)

In the first ever The New Real Hackathon we are inviting developers, creatives and scientists, and digital explorers of any kind – to rapidly and collaboratively articulate and engineer a response to the set challenge of developing understanding between machine learning algorithms and their human users.

Teams will have about 24 hours to analyse, probe, work with and break generative machine learning tools, both those openly available online as well as The New Real Observatory platform (image and text processing). Some preparatory work is envisaged. Mentors from The New Real will be on hand to help with any questions and arising issues.

Applications will open on The New Real’s website: https://newreal.cc/events/hackathon, where you can now register to receive updates and a reminder when the application opens. *Sign up for this Hackthon is by application, which will launch 2 months prior to the event.

Speaker Biographies

Professor Drew Hemment

Professor Drew Hemment is The New Real’s founder and principal investigator. Drew is an artist, designer and academic researcher, who over 25 years has been one of the key figures who has shaped the field of digital art and culture. He is Professor of Data Arts and Society, Chancellors Fellow and Director of Festival Futures at Edinburgh Futures Institute and Edinburgh College of Art within University of Edinburgh. He presently leads The New Real and Experiential AI in partnership with the Alan Turing Institute and Edinburgh’s Festivals, supporting significant new artistic works, and exploring new paradigms for creative, fair and inclusive AI.

Matjaz Vidma

Matjaz Vidmar is The New Real’s co-investigator, an interdisciplinary researcher, lecturer and strategist at the University of Edinburgh. He is an (Astro)Physicist by training, now examining innovation processes and (inter-)organisational learning and change, as well as other social dimensions of emerging technologies. He has an interest in using experiential Ai to create intimate interpretations of global datasets, in particular from Space & Satellite data, to influence sustainable development through futures thinking/literacy tools. He co-leads the delivery of the research portfolio of The New Real programme.

Event Partners

The New Real

Established in 2019, The New Real is a unique hub for AI, creativity and futures research. It is a partnership between the University of Edinburgh, Alan Turing Institute, and Edinburgh’s Festivals. Its research explores how AI impacts on life at a profound level, often interacting with us in fascinating and unanticipated ways, and illuminates how emerging technology can become a creative, playful and deeply impactful part of everyday living.

The New Real team believes that art and creativity can help to radically change how we think about AI design, moving beyond the current paradigm of learning patterns from large amounts of data, to embrace human traits such as bias, disagreement, and uncertainty as a signal with creative potential rather than noise that needs to be removed. They devise imaginative ways to experiment with new experiences, practices, infrastructures and business models, and to empower people be agents of positive change. See more at: www.newreal.cc

The Alan Turing Institute

The Alan Turing Institute is the national institute for data science and artificial intelligence, with headquarters at the British Library.

The Scottish AI Alliance

Delivering Scotland’s AI Strategy Scotland’s AI Strategy. It was launched in March 2021 with a vision for Scotland to become a leader in the development and use of trustworthy, ethical and inclusive AI. The Scottish AI Alliance is the body tasked with delivering this vision and the actions outlined in the strategy. It is a partnership between The Data Lab and the Scottish Government.

Please note this is a hybrid event. Streaming will be lived-captioned.

Important notice: This event will be photographed/recorded and images may be used for future marketing, promotional or archive purposes. If you would prefer not to be photographed please let us know at the event.

Antagonistic Sextet: A Performance by Raw Green Rust
2023-05-03 18:00 - 19:30 | Inspace, 1 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH8 9LE, United Kingdom
Join us for the final event of the Love Machine season with a performance by Raw Green Rust!

Raw Green Rust are an improvising laptop trio that make abstract glitch-dub that draws on wide ranging musical interests and interconnectedness. They share networked audio and control data between performers to allow for complex chains of generation and processing that are an articulation and exploration of interface, shared gesture and distributed creativity.

For this event, the trio will perform as an ‘Antagonistic Sextet’ with and against their own history. An archive of some of their previous performance has been strained through a neural network to prompt, provoke, inform and interfere with action and reaction in and across our various networks of agency.

According to the trio:

“An important part of our playing is to constantly sample, transform and process each other in real-time, in pursuit of an organic, shifting sound mass. We embellish this basic approach with tools that, for instance, (mis)use machine listening and machine learning to promote or disrupt our continual co-tuning in fluid and responsive ways.

Enforced separation underscored how much we take for granted our regular co-presence as an ongoing preparation for being unprepared. At the same time, though, there’s been a space to re-listen and imagine certain kinds of preparation that might push us towards exciting new mess.”

Performer Biographies

Jules Rawlinson

Jules Rawlinson is a composer and improviser that works with electronic sounds and digital visuals in solo and collaborative settings to explore performance practices with live electronics across a range of different themes and material. His most recent work was An Island of Sound with writer and artist JR Carpenter, an assemblage of found images, algorithmically generated texts, spoken word and live sound design. Other recent outputs make use of archival material coupled with machine learning and AI processes in corpus-based aesthetics of transformation. He is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Reid School of Music at Edinburgh University. For more information visit http://www.pixelmechanics.com

Owen Green

Owen Green is a composer-improviser, theorist and builder of strange, hybrid instruments/pieces that try, playfully, to adapt to their surroundings. Most recently, Owen has worked as a Senior Research Fellow in Creative Coding at the Centre for Research in New Music, University of Huddersfield, working on the ERC-funded FluCoMa project that puts machine listening and machine learning tools into the hands of musicians. In Spring 2023 will join the ERC-funded MusAI project at University College London, investigating the cultural implications of AI through critical studies examining its relationship with music. For more information visit http://owengreen.net/

Dave Murray-Rust

Dave Murray-Rust explores the messy terrain between people, data and things through a combination of making and thinking. Musically, he tries to make computer performance as responsive and generous as possible and has recently released a number of solo and duo recordings on international netlabels. His research investigates the ways in which we can work with things that have an increasing sense of agency, from sensing to responding to shaping the world around them. He is currently an Associate Professor in Human-Algorithm Interaction at TU Delft. For more information visit https://dave.murray-rust.org/

Raw Green Rust have been invited to perform at international festivals and conferences including Sonorities Festival, BEAST, xCoAx, Convergences and Beyond Future Design, and have been featured on BBC Radio 3’s Hear and Now programme. After performing together for 14 years, they recently released their first album, Inability To End, on the by-invitation Superpang label. For more information visit https://rawgreenrust.bandcamp.com/

Please note this is a hybrid event. Streaming will be lived-captioned.

Important notice: This event will be photographed/recorded and images may be used for future marketing, promotional or archive purposes. If you would prefer not to be photographed please let us know at the event.

Image credit: Teresa Hunyadi

Creating Playful Comics Together with AI: A Workshop with Yana Knight
2023-05-02 14:00 - 16:00 | https://efi.ed.ac.uk/event/creating-playful-comics-together-with-ai-a-workshop-with-yana-knight/
In this workshop artist Yana Knight will share a few ideas and techniques of working with AI as a creative medium and the potential that lurks within this collaboration to extend, support and enrich creativity. Switching between analogue and digital, with a little help from AI (and a moody pig called Jean-Michel), you’ll create a short, simply-drawn cartoon based on your daily experiences with a healthy portion of humour, imagination and a few twists and turns. You will get a taste of the whole cycle, drawing the images and playing with AI tools. No prior artistic or technical experience is necessary, but bring your sense of humour and an open mind.

Speaker Biography

Yana Knight

Yana Knight is a multidisciplinary artist, researcher and teacher based in Brussels, Belgium and Stockholm, Sweden. Her work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Spontaneous Art in Brussels, Russian Cultural Center of Belgium and has been featured in the Dutch Design Week. Her work is inspired by the ordinary and extraordinary experience of living a life in its richness, often with a playful, humorous, surreal and absurd streak. It emphasises experimentation, exploration of human experiences, observation and storytelling. It stems from her colourful life, having lived in six countries, passed through many adventures and through different pockets of the world. Her artistic toolbox is shaped by the three corners of a triangle – visual arts, language and (playful) technology. She works across mediums switching between paints, pencils, words, camera, software and code, as well as slightly less traditional options, such as crushed autumn leaves, chocolate sweets wrappers, broken piano notes, toilet paper rolls and pet robots. Currently, she is investigating how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can support her artistic practice in creating new forms of non-linear visual narratives and experiences.

Catharsis In the Age of the Metaverse
2023-04-28 18:00 - 19:30 | Inspace, 1 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH8 9LE, United Kingdom
The transformative power of art has been acknowledged and debated since the fourth century BC, when Aristotle theorised the concept of “katharsis” in his Poetics to describe our emotional change through the aesthetic experience of tragic theatre. In his view, the process involved a first phase of mimesis, namely the identification with the characters through the empathic experience of pity and fear, which subsequently led to a ritual purification of toxic, harmful elements for both the mind and the body. Throughout the centuries, other theorists have demonstrated that the same process can be experienced through various forms of art, including literature, cinema, and the visual and performing arts.

The rise of Virtual, Augmented, and Extended Reality (AR/XR) with their applications, ranging from the performative to the therapeutic and political realms, and, especially the vision of a fully immersive experience in the metaverse, a platform where the virtual dimensions of fiction and performance meet our real life experiences, urge us to investigate whether “catharsis” is still conceivable, in hybrid or entirely artificial environments; and how a reconfigured concept of “catharsis” can be envisioned as part of the co-evolution of human, natural, and artificial life forms. What forms will cathartic experiences take in the new fictional dimension of the metaverse? More specifically: how can new forms of storytelling and performance in VR, AR, or XR help us address the most pressing societal challenges of our time?

Speaker Biographies

Shane Casey

Shane Casey is a creative technologist and creative director with 20 years’ experience in advertising and digital communications. His work fuses innovation and interactivity to help businesses use digital media and emerging technologies to inspire, intrigue and engage. He leads the Creative team in the Human Sciences Studio of The Dock, Accenture’s global flagship innovation centre. Before joining the Studio, Shane worked as Creative Director and Creative Technologist at Boys+Girls, Publicis Dublin and Mason Zimbler. Shane holds a Masters in Design for Digital Media and has won multiple awards from D&AD, Kinsale Sharks, Effies, ICAD and more. He was recently awarded a Silver Cannes Lion for creative effectiveness, adding to the previous Gold and Bronze Lions, for ‘The Connected Island’ campaign for Three Ireland.

Martina Mendola

Martina Mendola has a Masters in Comparative Literature from The University of Turin (Italy), a Postgraduate Certificate in Innovation and a PhD in Contemporary Literature from Trinity College Dublin. Since 2019 she is a Researcher in the Human Sciences Studio at The Dock, where she explores societal challenges at the intersection between business and technology. Because of her blended research experience in both industry and academia she has been invited to champion the role of Arts and Humanities in forums such as The Future Jobs Ireland 2019 and the campaign Creating our Futures 2021. Among her research interests are coming-of-age stories, youth studies, identity and liquidity.

Federica Pedriali

Federica Pedriali is Professor of Literary Metatheory and Modern Italian Studies at the University of Edinburgh and Research Affiliate at the Edinburgh Futures Institute. Her work intersects Biopolitics, Cognitive Narratology, Continental Philosophy, Decolonial Studies, Migration and Diaspora Studies, the Environmental Humanities, Performance Studies, and Political Theory. She is currently working on biopower, dissonant heritages, and the future of change, having worked, among other things, on the spatialities of war, totalitarian Europe, and the digital humanities also through several ongoing public engagement projects. She is the author or editor of 24 volumes. Her recent books include: (ed), Roberto Esposito’s Italian Thought (Edinburgh University Press – in press); (co-ed), Mobilizing Cultural Identities in the First World War (Palgrave, 2020); (ed), Gadda: interpreti a confronto (Cesati, 2020). She was recently elected to the Italian Ambassador’s Scientific Council, London, and is a member of the UKRI Talent Panel College.

Massimo Riva

Massimo Riva is Professor of Italian Studies and Modern Media at Brown University. He is the author of several books on melancholy and other literary maladies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, post-humanism and the hyper-novel, the future of literature in the digital age. He is the editor of Italian Tales, an anthology of contemporary Italian fiction, and the co-editor of the Cambridge U.P. edition of Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on Human Dignity. Since the late 1990s, his pioneering work in the digital humanities has led to the creation of several projects, including the Decameron Web, recipient of two major grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Virtual Humanities Lab, recipient of a two-year NEH grant, and the Garibaldi Panorama and the Risorgimento Archive, recipient of a Digital Innovation award from the American Council of Learned Societies. For his engagement with research-based teaching, he was nominated Royce Family Professor of Teaching Excellence (2015-2018). His most recent project, a digital monograph entitled Shadow Plays. Virtual Realities in an Analog World was published in June 2022 by Stanford University Press.

Chair

Emanuela Patti

Emanuela Patti is Lecturer in Italian Studies at the University of Edinburgh. She holds an MA in Comparative Literature from UCL and a Ph.D. in Italian Studies from the University of Birmingham. After her doctoral studies, she was Senior Research Fellow in the collaborative AHRC-funded research project ‘Interdisciplinary Italy 1900-2020: interart/intermedia’. Her research lies at the intersection of literary, media, and cultural studies, and has received prestigious grants from the AHRC and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She has published widely on experimental literature and how stories travel across arts and digital media, including the monograph ‘Opera aperta. Italian electronic literature from the 1960s to the present’ (Peter Lang, 2022), two special issues ‘Experimental narratives: from the novel to digital storytelling’ (Comparative Critical Studies, 2016) and ‘Reading practices in experimental narratives: a comparative perspective across cultures’ (Romance Studies, 2016), and the co-edited volume ‘Transmedia. Storia, memoria e narrazioni attraverso i media’ (Mimesis, 2014).

Please note this is a hybrid event. Streaming will be live captioned.

Important notice: This event will be photographed/recorded and images may be used for future marketing, promotional or archive purposes. If you would prefer not to be photographed please let us know at the event.

Speculative Forensics: Machine Learning and the Rise of Vocal Portraiture
2023-04-26 18:00 - 19:30 | Inspace, 1 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH8 9LE, United Kingdom
As part of Adversarial Acoustics Unit Test (Martin Disley) will screen their new short film, investigating the relationship between vocal forensics and machine learning through a mix of critical and speculative aesthetic practice. Whilst the rise of machine learning models has led to an increased awareness of the ways in which sociocultural biases are often embedded into their construction, this session explores how an investigative practice can reveal points of fragility in these system in order to develop new methods for resisting their application.

Speaker Biographies

Martin Disley

Murad Khan is a course leader and senior lecturer at UAL’s Creative Computing Institute. His research explores the relationship between pathology, perception and prediction across cognitive neuroscience and computer science, outlining a philosophy of noise and uncertainty in the development of predictive systems.

The collaborative research studio, Unit Test, explores the place of investigative methods in counter data-science practices.

Vlad Afanasiev

Vlad Afanasiev is a designer and researcher from Ukraine who works across a broad range of spatial and visual practices. He serves as a strategic designer in Dark Matter Labs where his work focuses on urban and environmental governance, the use of forecasting technics, predictive simulation and modelling. Besides that, he was a part of The Terraforming interdisciplinary research program and currently serves as a City & Technology program tutor at IAAC in Barcelona.

Please note this is a hybrid event. Streaming will be live captioned.

Important notice: This event will be photographed/recorded and images may be used for future marketing, promotional or archive purposes. If you would prefer not to be photographed please let us know at the event.

Technomoral Conversations: Technologically Mediated Intimacy
2023-04-24 18:00 - 19:00 | Inspace, 1 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH8 9LE, United Kingdom
Part of the Edinburgh Futures Institute’s Love Machine event season.

The Technomoral Conversations series brings together leaders, creators and innovators from academia, technology, business and the third sector in a “fireside chat” format to discuss futures that are worth wanting. Our conversation for the “Love Machine” EFI event season will focus on intimate relationships with machines, from robot pets and therapeutic companions to apps for dating and romance, to technologies embedded in our bodies. How can we navigate the complexities of technologies that are entangled with both our bodies and our emotions?

Speaker Biographies

This will be updated in due course.

Please note this is a hybrid event. Streaming will be live captioned.

Important notice: This event will be photographed/recorded and images may be used for future marketing, promotional or archive purposes. If you would prefer not to be photographed please let us know at the event.

Galvanised: Big Mind – Collective Behaviour and Collective Intelligence
2023-04-21 17:00 - 19:00 | Playfair Library Hall, Old College, South Bridge, Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH8 9YL, United Kingdom
This Galvanised seminar addresses the opportunities that collective behaviour and collective intelligence may offer for addressing a wide range of social and political issues. In keeping with the dual science/arts theme of Galvanised, the seminar will be presented by a biological scientist and a social and political scientist. Collective behaviour evolved in animals and serves many functions ranging from increasing safety (fish schooling) through to attachment (such as in primate groups). In humans, collective intelligence has been shown, experimentally, to solve certain problems much faster than individual action, strikingly in Riley Crane’s successful crowd-sourcing framework that won the Red Balloon challenge set by DARPA in 2009. New collective intelligence methods are increasingly and widely used in science, business and government, sometimes combined with artificial intelligence. Many other examples of the concept of “Big Mind” will be offered by our two speakers, along with the limitations of such approaches.

Speaker Biographies

Professor Iain Couzin

Professor Iain Couzin was born and brought up in Edinburgh. He is now a Director of the Max-Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the Cluster of Excellence ‘Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour’ (University of Konstanz), a National Geographic Explorer and a 2023 Rothschild Distinguished Fellow at the University of Cambridge. His work aims to reveal the fundamental principles that underlie evolved collective behaviour, and consequently his research includes the study of a wide range of biological systems, from neural collectives to insect swarms, fish schools, primate groups and human crowds. He has been the recipient of various high-profile awards. In 2022 he received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize—Germany’s highest research honour.

Professor Sir Geoff Mulgan

Accordion content.

Professor Sir Geoff Mulgan (University College London) argues that collective intelligence, prompted in part by a wave of digital technologies, has the potential to address and perhaps help solve some of the great challenges of our time. He served as Director of Policy and later as Director of the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit in Downing Street under Tony Blair, and before that as the co-founder of the Demos ‘Think-Tank’. He was Chief Executive of the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA), advises governments around the world, and is now a Professor at UCL. He is an editor in chief of the journal Collective Intelligence. His most recent book is ‘Another World is Possible’ (Hurst/OUP)

Important notice: This event will be photographed/recorded and images may be used for future marketing, promotional or archive purposes. If you would prefer not to be photographed please let us know at the event.

AI in Banking: The Case for Customers
2023-04-20 14:30 - 16:30 | Auditorium, Business School, The University of Edinburgh, 29 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH8 9JS, United Kingdom
Pre-event registration and coffees will be available from 2pm, with the event starting at 2:30pm.

Predictive analytics, virtual assistants, and machine learning are already commonly used by banks and financial services providers. The application of AI in banking is across the board, with uses in the front office (voice assistants and biometrics), middle office (anti-fraud risk monitoring and complex legal and compliance workflows), and back office (credit underwriting with smart contracts infrastructure) (Fares, O.H. et al. 2022). As AI is more increasingly used to hyper-personalise user journey, and more intelligent systems transform the way financial services providers interact with customers, how does AI impact the customers and what are the benefits and the risks?

Join our panel discussion with experts in banking and fintech who will examine these questions:

How is AI transforming banking/financial services now and what is its potential in the future?

How does AI impact customer journey in the banking sector, from customer acquisition to service delivery?

What is the impact of AI on customers and how it can be used to improve customer experience?

How do fintech and banks specifically use AI to help vulnerable customers?

What is the potential for bias vs efficiency when using AI to deal with customers?

Who is taking part in this event?

Rachel Curtis – Inicio.AI

Manuel Peleteiro – Inbest

Andreas Schaefer – Tesco Bank

Euan Wielewski – Natwest

Mikael Paris– Fintech Scotland

Gbenga Ibikunle – University of Edinburgh

The event will be followed by networking and drinks from 4pm-5pm.

Speaker Biographies

Rachel Curtis

Rachel Curtis has spent nearly 30 years in the Financial Services arena including at Santander and then as Chief Customer Officer for a challenger bank. She still sits as a Non-Executive Director for a regional Building Society, holding the new role of Consumer Duty Board Champion. In 2021 Rachel made the switch to lead a Fintech start-up that has a B2B software platform that uses conversational AI to help organisations better help their customers complete detailed affordability assessments.

Manuel Peleteiro

Manuel Peleteiro is an experienced product owner of data-intensive data processes and products. Manuel is the founder of Inbest, a data analytics platform for welfare advice. At Inbest, he is in charge of business development and product management. Before this role, Manuel was a product owner in Moody’s Analytics, a quant consultant at Accenture, and an investment banking analyst at Caixabank. Manuel has a BSc (Hons) Economics and Finance, MSc Financial Mathematics and is a CFA charterholder.

Andreas Schaefer

Andreas Schaefer currently works as a data science manager at Tesco Bank, specialising in applying machine learning to credit risk projects and strategy. He is experienced in using Data Science to manage and analyse risk over the complete customer life cycle having worked in a variety of risk related roles in the UK over the last 18 years. Andreas’ roles comprised fraud strategy, customer acquisition, collections and recoveries as well as stress testing and capital models. He is particularly interested in using advanced data mining and machine learning to create insight over and above traditional methods.

Euan Wielewski

Euan Wielewski is Machine Learning Lead at NatWest, where he and his team develop AI solutions across a variety of use cases in the bank. Before joining NatWest, Euan was the founder and CEO of Anomalous, an AI-first start up developing deep learning-based inspection software for the aerospace industry. He was an academic at the University of Glasgow, where he taught Python and led a research group working at the interface of materials science and numerical simulation. He has a PhD in engineering science from the University of Oxford and a MEng in mechanical engineering from the University of Glasgow. Euan loves to read sci-fi and is a massive coffee nerd.

Mikael Paris

Marketing Director at FinTech Scotland, Mickael has worked for both start-ups and FTSE100 companies including Maxymiser, Skyscanner and more recently Standard Life where he was headed up the digital function.

In January 2018 Mickael and Stephen Ingledew launched FinTech Scotland to help make Scotland one of the leading fintech hubs in the world.

Mickael speaks at various conferences focussing on fintech, customer led and data driven marketing. In 2015 he was featured in the BIMA100 list of marketing influencers as well as the Marketing Magazine NextGen Power 100 and last year he was awarded the title of Fintech Evangelist of the Year at the Digit Fintech Summit Awards.

Mikael Paris

Marketing Director at FinTech Scotland, Mickael has worked for both start-ups and FTSE100 companies including Maxymiser, Skyscanner and more recently Standard Life where he was headed up the digital function.

In January 2018 Mickael and Stephen Ingledew launched FinTech Scotland to help make Scotland one of the leading fintech hubs in the world.

Mickael speaks at various conferences focussing on fintech, customer led and data driven marketing. In 2015 he was featured in the BIMA100 list of marketing influencers as well as the Marketing Magazine NextGen Power 100 and last year he was awarded the title of Fintech Evangelist of the Year at the Digit Fintech Summit Awards.

Chair

Gbenga Ibikunle

Gbenga Ibikunle is a Professor and Chair of Finance at the University of Edinburgh, and as the Director for Industry, Economy and Society at the University of Edinburgh’s Edinburgh Futures Institute, he leads on strategic FinTech and Financial Services initiatives and convenes the FinTech and Financial Services Research Cluster at the University. He was the Founding Director of both the University’s PhD in Financial Technology programme and its taught master’s degree programme, the MSc Finance, Technology and Policy (FTP). Gbenga is also the Deputy Scientific Director at the Fondazione European Capital Markets Cooperative Research Centre in Pescara, Italy, a Fellow at the RoZetta Institute (formerly Capital Markets CRC) in Sydney, Australia, and a Member of the of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on the Future of Resilient Financial Systems (2023-2024 term). Gbenga’s current research sits at the intersection of the economics of financial markets and data science with applications to practice and policy. His commissioned research reports have been published by various bodies, such as the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority and the UK Houses of Parliament’s All Party Parliamentary Corporate Governance Group. His work has also been published in leading international academic journals, such as Journal of Financial Markets, Journal of Banking & Finance, Journal of Marketing and Expert Systems with Applications, and featured in the news media, such as The New York Times, The Economist, Financial Times, Forbes and Bloomberg Markets.

Important notice: This event will be photographed/recorded, and images may be used for future marketing, promotional or archive purposes. If you would prefer not to be photographed, please let us know at the event.

It’s All About the Feelings...
2023-04-19 18:00 - 19:30 | Inspace, 1 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH8 9LE, United Kingdom
Come and join us for a performance event that takes a peek inside AI and emotion recognition.

Emotional, empathic, sentiment recognition systems, is an area of AI of significant implication for our current and near future lives. Pitched as capturing ‘real-time emotion’ and ‘non-conscious responses’, they have been developed as a method to measure and map our emotional expressions. Current real world use cases include HR, market research, post-natal parenting and education, near future uses include potential use within border control and a planned integration within the production of all new cars in the EU from 2024.

However, there are serious concerns about both the efficacy of these technologies and the ethics of use. In October 2022, the UK Information Commission warned companies to steer clear of emotional analysis technologies or face fines, due to “pseudoscientific” nature of the field as well as citing the potential of technology to breach people’s rights and break laws (see report here). Central to these concerns is the reductive nature of these systems and the problematic standardised categorisations embedded within their databases, which present serious issues of representation and bias, with the potential to reinforce inequalities, including racism, sexism, ageism and ableism.

But how does sentiment recognition technology actually work and how accurate is it? This performance will reveal how emotional AI databases actually work, behind the smoke and mirrors. It will tease out the affect these technologies might have on our near futures and behaviours, and present an opportunity to think about appropriate, fair real-world application and uses of AI technologies.

‘It’s All About the Feelings…’ is a creative research project led by Beverley Hood, an artist and Reader in Technological Embodiment & Creative Practice at the University of Edinburgh, featuring actor, Pauline Goldsmith.

This event is presented by the Centre for Data, Culture and Society, and supported by The New Real, Tramway Supports, Edinburgh College of Art, the Edinburgh Futures Institute, Creative Informatics and Cove Park.

Performer Biographies

Beverley Hood

Beverley Hood is an artist and Reader in Technological Embodiment and Creative Practice. Her creative research work interrogates the impact of technology on the body, relationships and human experience through the creation of digital media and performance arts projects, and writing. She has extensive experience of collaborative work and project development involving a range of practitioners, including medical researchers, scientists, writers, technologists, dancers, actors and composers. Beverley’s work has been performed, screened and exhibited at leading international venues.

Pauline Goldsmith

Pauline Goldsmith is a Glasgow based actor, writer, director and theatre maker from Belfast. She is also an occasional stand-up comedienne, creating and performing her own shows. Her critically acclaimed production – Irish wake, Bright Colours Only, continues to tour at home and abroad – in a hearse. She has worked with Vanishing Point Theatre for over twenty years as an actor and creative associate working most recently on Interiors, Wonderland, Tomorrow, The Destroyed Room and Tabula Rasa which she co-wrote and performed with Scottish Ensemble.

Chair

Dr Karen Gregory

Dr Karen Gregory is a digital sociologist, ethnographer, and Senior Lecturer in the department of sociology at the University of Edinburgh. She is currently at work on a research project that examines workers’ conceptualizations of risk in the on-demand platform economy and has particular interest in digital worker inquiry and the uses of digital and creative methods to understand the experience of platform work. She is author of many articles on our relationship with technology including ‘Anger in academic Twitter: Sharing, caring and getting mad online‘ (2018) and ‘Delivering Edinburgh: Uncovering the digital geography of platform labour in the city‘ (2020), and she is co-editor of Digital Sociologies (Polity Press, 2016).

Image credit: Chris Scott

CI Labs 23: FESTIVAL FUTURES
2023-04-18 18:00 - 20:30 | Scotland
REGISTER

Join us as we explore the themes, ideas and methods our researchers used to produce FestForward magazine – a fictional, speculative cultural magazine, set in 2030, exploring digital and data-driven futures for Edinburgh and South East Scotland’s festivals.

FestForward, written in 2022 and produced in collaboration with Glasgow-based design researchers Andthen, was developed through interviews, conversations and workshops with individuals and organisations working in the region’s cultural sector. The magazine tells stories about possible futures – the good, the bad and the ugly – to stimulate conversations about how we work together in the present to discover and develop equitable and sustainable approaches to the application of digital and data-driven technologies.

T﻿he programme will include:

A speculative futures workshop, using provocations and ideas from FestForward, where you’ll have the chance to write your own festival futures.

Panel discussions imagining equitable and sustainable festivals in 2030, and exploring futures for creative technologies, online and hybrid performance and concepts of ‘liveness’

Live performance! More details announced soon…

Refreshments provided and the Biscuit Factory bar will be open

Utopia Lab: Futures Dreaming
2023-04-14 11:00 - 14:00 | Project Room (1.06), 50 George Square, 50 George Square, Newington, Edinburgh, EH8 9JU, United Kingdom
Our Utopia Labs are ‘no-spaces’, places where everyone is welcome to join us in dreaming futures that inspire our experience of the present. The term utopia was coined from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book

Utopia, describing a fictional island society in the Atlantic Ocean.  The word comes from Greek: οὐ (“not”) and τόπος (“place”) and means “no-place”, and strictly describes any non-existent society ‘described in considerable detail’.

In this session invited speakers will present visions of their Utopia, which we will (individually or in groups, as preferred) respond to by creating our own artistic and creative mini-Utopias. We will consider what Utopia means and how it could be a useful crucible in which to explore positive change.

11am-12pm: Introductions and Presentations

12pm-1pm: Lunch and Dreaming/Making

1pm-2pm: Sharing  Lunch and materials for creating will be provided. The lab will also include meditation, poetry reading/listening and simple movement and breathing exercises. All body types and levels of experience welcome.

Utopia is a ‘no-space’ for contemplation, innovation and collaboration. Our labs curate interactions between academics, artists, entrepreneurs, students and audiences in person and online globally. We are interested in that which is provocative and irreverent as well as that which is nurturing and joyful. Utopia questions are catalysts for inquiry, learning and creativity. With an emphasis on innovative and experimental ways of communicating, we will explore meditation, dialogue and co-creation with the help of a facilitator. Participants consist of University staff and students, and non-University practitioners.

Important Notice: This event may be photographed and/or recorded for promotional or recruitment materials for the University and University approved third parties. For further information please contact the organisers.

Image credit: Andrew Perry
