Professor Joanna Batstone, PhD, DEng, FTSE is a leading global expert on AI. She has more than 20 years’ experience in top executive roles in the USA, Europe and Australia, helping universities, companies and government use technology to meet their goals.

Joanna is a Professor of Practice in the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University and previously the founding Director of the Monash Data Futures Institute, supporting collaborative research with governments, companies and organisations in using AI, data science and analytics to deliver AI solutions for social good.

Joanna joined Monash after a range of technical and business leadership roles in IBM’s Research and development laboratories, including work with IBM Watson.

Steven Connor is Director of Research of the Digital Futures Institute, King’s College, London. He is Grace 2 Professor of English Emeritus in the University of Cambridge, and an Emeritus Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge.

His most recent books are The Madness of Knowledge: On Wisdom, Ignorance and Fantasies of Knowing (London: Reaktion/Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2019), Giving Way: Thoughts on Unappreciated Dispositions (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019), A History of Asking (London: Open Humanities Press, 2023), Dreamwork: Why All Work is Imaginary (London: Reaktion/Chicago University Press, 2023) and Styles of Seriousness (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2023).

His Gaston Bachelard: An Intellectual Biography is forthcoming from Reaktion in July 2025. He is developing a project about technological life-times and writing a book trading under the name Always Assuming: A Radiology of the Implicit.

Steven Connor (KCL)
stevenconnor.com

Dr Sara de Freitas is a Company Director and Visiting Professor, specialising in the innovative use of digital and online education. Over the last twenty-five years following from a PhD in information science, and first role at Birkbeck College, University of London, Sara has become recognised as an expert in digital education, holding Professorships in immersive environments, digital education, and digital technologies (in 8 universities), authoring Education in Computer Generated Environments, producing over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers and 40 book projects, in her research institutes, she has led teams, developing 20 software applications and 3 platforms. Building on this work, Sara has held Directorial and Executive roles in Higher Education, including Director of Research and Pro/Deputy Vice Chancellor in 4 universities in the UK and Australia, as well as being Director of Education/Head of 2 online schools with 4,000 children. Weypoint is Sara’s third company, the first Innovatech LLP was a consultancy company, Sara’s second, an AIM-listed PLC company, was sold for over £70M. Weypoint, is a start-up delivering co-designed immersive media productions. As a consultant, Sara has worked with a wide range of governments, universities, and businesses, to help shape their institutional and sectoral research, strategy, policy, and business practices, including the design and procurement of digital online services, completing over 100 Technical, Policy & Strategy reports. She is a University Governor at Sunderland University, with special responsibility for London Campus, and holds visiting Professorships at the Open University and South Wales, and is an Honorary Research Fellow, at the University of London. Her awards include: Fellowships of the Royal Society of Arts, Business Excellence Institute and a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Email: sara@weypointuk.com

Book: Education in Computer Generated Environments

Dr Sanja Milivojevic is an Associate Professor in Digital Futures at the Bristol Digital Futures Institute and School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol. She is a CI at the Centre for Sociodigital Futures at University of Bristol, Co-Director of Border Criminologies/Research Associate at the University of Oxford, and Adjunct Associate Professor at La Trobe University, Melbourne. Sanja holds LL.B. and LL.M. from Belgrade University’s Law School, Serbia, and a PhD from Monash University, Australia. Her research interests are mobilities (borders, border control, human trafficking), digital frontier technologies (AI, robotics), gender and victimisation, international criminal justice and human rights. Sanja is a recipient of UK, Australian and international research grants, and was a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford, Oslo, Belgrade and Zagreb, and a Public Interest Law Fellow at Columbia University’s Law School in New York. She has published six books and over 60 publications in English, Serbian and Italian. Sanja’s latest book is Crime and punishment in the future Internet: Digital frontier technologies and criminology in the twenty-first century (Routledge 2021). 

Daniel is a social scientist and Professor of digital futures in the Bristol University Business School. For over 20 years he has worked on collaborative sociotechnical research projects, often working with computer scientists and engineers to come up with new ways of working and thinking.

From studies of the everyday life of algorithms through to research on markets for digital data, he has demonstrated a commitment to challenging taken for granted assumptions regarding: the relationship between problems and solutions; what it means to govern and distribute relations of accountability and responsibility; and how we ought to go about the process of doing research.

Marion Thain is Director of Edinburgh Futures Institute, and Professor of Culture and Technology at the University of Edinburgh. She began her career as a Junior Research Fellow at Cambridge; moved to New York University as a professor of in the school of the interdisciplinary global liberal arts, and as Director of Digital Humanities for NYU; and returned to the UK in 2018 as Professor of Culture and Technology and Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at King’s College London. She publishes primarily on the relationship between culture and technology, and has developed the new multidisciplinary field of ‘Attention Studies’. She also publishes on the future of the university, at a time of sector crisis.

See https://www.marionthain.org.

Professor Denise Whitelock is responsible for providing strategic leadership to IET and is a member of the University Senior Team. She is involved in the research and development required by the University to feed into and evaluate policy, provide advice and promote an evidence-based approach for learning, teaching and scholarship. Denise is responsible for the development of IET’s internationally recognised research portfolio and cultivating innovation that builds on research and scholarship.

Sandra Woolley is a computer scientist and a member of the Keele University Digital Society Institute leadership team. She leads the Future Systems research group and chairs Keele’s Central Research Ethics Committee.

Her first degree was in Mathematics and Physics, and her PhD was in Electrical Engineering from Manchester University. She previously worked as an engineer in the UK aerospace industry, for the US Dept. Commerce at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, and at the University of Birmingham. Her research interests encompass i) sensing systems including health technologies, assistive technologies and wearables, ii) digital heritage including VR, AR, serious games, and the virtual reconstruction of artefacts and iii) human-computer interaction particularly human-AI interaction and the broader ethical aspects and societal implications of digital technology and innovation.