ual-doctoral-symposium-summer26

Extracted from the application form:

what format will your presentation take?

individual oral/spoken presentation, with slides or other screen-based media
~~table-top or object-display with oral/spoken presentation~~
~~poster presentation~~
~~group presentation or in conversation~~

Will you deliver your presentation in person or remotely/online?

In person
~~Online~~

For the timetable: the symposium and exhibition runs from Monday 22 - Friday 26 June 2026, between the hours of 9.30am to 6.00pm BST.
Are there any days and times that you are unable to deliver your presentation? (We will do our best to accommodate you)

For the Programme: what is the title of your research project?

After Intelligence: building possibility spaces for learning and making with and through generative systems

~~After Intelligence: a live doctoral inquiry into AI, making and creative knowledge ??~~

~~After Intelligence: speculative platforms for knowledge-making and learning with generative AI ??~~

~~Live coding a PhD: speculative infrastructures for knowledge-making in the age of generative AI??~~

For the Programme: provide an abstract of your research project (up to 300 words)

For the Programme: list up to 5 keywords for your presentation

What can AI add to the processes of learning and knowledge-making, while preserving the boundary around the messy, generative thinking so central to creative work? And what assumptions about intelligence, agency, and knowledge are embedded in the commercial AI systems now entering educational contexts?
The research proceeds through building: developing speculative tools, live systems, and research infrastructure as primary modes of investigation, where each artefact operates as both a technical object and a theoretical proposition.

PhD-Live sits at the centre of this work: a live, public-facing digital research environment that treats the process of doctoral thinking as the core output rather than just the means to an end. Around it, a wider infrastructure is taking shape, including a supervisor bot whose development has surfaced a central design tension: how do you build an AI tool that introduces genuine epistemic friction rather than simply reflecting the researcher back at themselves? These are not neutral questions. They point toward a principle that emerged from making rather than planning: that LLM reasoning and human associative thought operate with different logics. LLMs are built to resolve and optimise; creative research thinking often needs to stay open, contradictory, unfinished. Designing with both means holding that difference deliberately, rather than letting the efficiency logic of the tool quietly shape the thinking.

The research sits at the intersection of speculative design, live coding practice, and critical AI studies. It is shaped by its moment: the politics of knowledge, precarity in higher education, and the institutional pressures that surround the integration of AI. Within this, several threads have emerged as central: what a locally-based AI infrastructure might offer creative research practice; the distinction between liveness and performance; and how generative AI can participate in creative thinking without speaking for the researcher.

keywords:

Live coding
Speculative design
Generative AI
Knowledge-making
Creative education

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Extracted from the application form: ### Extracted from the application form: **For the Programme: what is the title of your research project?** ### **For the Programme: what is the title of your research project?** After Intelligence: a live doctoral inquiry into AI, making and creative knowledge ?? After Intelligence: building possibility spaces for learning and making with and through generative systems After Intelligence: speculative platforms for knowledge-making and learning with generative AI ?? ~~After Intelligence: a live doctoral inquiry into AI, making and creative knowledge ??~~ Live coding a PhD: speculative infrastructures for knowledge-making in the age of generative AI?? ~~After Intelligence: speculative platforms for knowledge-making and learning with generative AI ??~~ **For the Programme: provide an abstract of your research project (up to 300 words)** ~~Live coding a PhD: speculative infrastructures for knowledge-making in the age of generative AI??~~ ### **For the Programme: provide an abstract of your research project (up to 300 words)** ~~Please share information here on AV playback, technical equipment, production or display requirements. Please describe equipment or furniture that you would need to make your presentation or exhibition display. You don't need to answer this question if you're presenting as an individual with slides.~~ What can AI add to the processes of learning and knowledge-making, while preserving the boundary around the messy, generative thinking so central to creative work? And what assumptions about intelligence, agency, and knowledge are embedded in the commercial AI systems now entering educational contexts? The research proceeds through building: developing speculative tools, live systems, and research infrastructure as primary modes of investigation, where each artefact operates as both a technical object and a theoretical proposition. PhD-Live sits at the centre of this work: a live, public-facing digital research environment that treats the process of doctoral thinking as the core output rather than just the means to an end. Around it, a wider infrastructure is taking shape, including a supervisor bot whose development has surfaced a central design tension: how do you build an AI tool that introduces genuine epistemic friction rather than simply reflecting the researcher back at themselves? These are not neutral questions. They point toward a principle that emerged from making rather than planning: that LLM reasoning and human associative thought operate with different logics. LLMs are built to resolve and optimise; creative research thinking often needs to stay open, contradictory, unfinished. Designing with both means holding that difference deliberately, rather than letting the efficiency logic of the tool quietly shape the thinking. The research sits at the intersection of speculative design, live coding practice, and critical AI studies. It is shaped by its moment: the politics of knowledge, precarity in higher education, and the institutional pressures that surround the integration of AI. Within this, several threads have emerged as central: what a locally-based AI infrastructure might offer creative research practice; the distinction between liveness and performance; and how generative AI can participate in creative thinking without speaking for the researcher. keywords: - Live coding - Speculative design - Generative AI - Knowledge-making - Creative education