Since 2021 MASI has curated thought-leadership events to discuss and create key transdisciplinary research and impact agendas.
The events will be 2-3 days in duration, have involve invited local, national and international participants (25-30 attendees) and have a clear strategy for inclusive and diverse participation; and provide opportunities to increase participation via digital means if appropriate.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has transformative potential across a range of sectors, including healthcare; but raises difficult questions about how best to regulate the development and use of such technologies in practice. Concerns over the trustworthiness of AI, and the perceived public (dis-)trust of such technology have been raised (House of Lords Select Committee on AI Report, 2018). Yet, in response, the UK Government favours a ‘light touch’ approach, adopting broad principles and sectorfocused regulation, by largely applying pre-existing regulations to AI in various contexts (e.g., Automated and Electric Vehicles Act 2018, intended to plug civil liability gaps for autonomous vehicles). This is a pro-innovation regulatory approach, and the government has made clear it will not rush to legislate for fear of over-burdening businesses (DSIT White Paper, 2023). Following the UK’s recent AI Safety Summit, the Bletchley Declaration seeks the development of “risk-based policies ... to ensure safety" (2023). In the EU, the anticipated AI Act, first proposed in 2021, is still subject to debate over the reliability of self-regulation by corporations (Reuters, 2023). The EU’s primary objective is the development of an ‘ecosystem of trust’, to be achieved via a rules based, cross-cutting legal framework for trustworthy AI.
This transdisciplinary 2-day event will explore AI usage in a range of healthcare contexts (half a day of facilitated group work) and consider the different theoretical frameworks, issues, interests, perspectives, consequences and impacts that arise when AI tools are employed (plenary talks plus half a day of moderated discussion). For each situated context, we will explore the effects of different regulatory approaches, eg sectorspecific vs rules-based (half a day of facilitated group work), and consider how stakeholders would be best engaged in formulating how to equip society to appropriately exploit AI tools in healthcare, while maintaining a vigilant guard against falling prey to unsafe, biased or inappropriate technology or power imbalances (plenary talks plus half a day of moderated discussion). All breakout sessions will retain the multidisciplinary character of the workshop where possible.
Biophilia, a concept popularised by the famed ecologist E.O. Wilson (2003) in 1984, states that humans have an innate tendency to seek connection with nature. Sadly, our approaches to developing and organising urban and rural space is moving us farther from nature in almost every aspect of our lives, from where and how we live to what we eat and how we work. There is, however, a slow return to our deep biophilic instinct, or ‘the innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes’ (Wilson 2003:1). This is evidenced by the application of ‘biophilic principles’ in architecture, landscaping, product design, health care, the arts and literature. This nascent social movement spans all sectors and disciplines. At its root, biophilia is our natural love of nature and simple respect for other life forms. Therefore, it may be just the right antidote to the ongoing climate and ecological crises and an opportunity to bring together stakeholders and experts from a range of disciplines to collaborate to develop sustainable solutions that promise to redress approaches to design that undermine the ecological integrity of the spaces in which we live.
The proposed event will be a two-day symposium and workshop during which the invited participants and additional stakeholders will set the agenda and activities that the Biophilic Centre of Excellence will enact.
Activities and talks will focus on the following themes:
• Biophilic design in the local landscape;
• Co-creation and transdisciplinarity;
• A roadmap towards a biophilic nation;
• Biophilic Wales in international contexts.
The first day of the symposium will comprise presentations from attendees that will be used to frame the centre development activities that make up day two. The second day will be organised as a series of exercises around funding scoping, activity planning and proposal outline writing to develop coherent visions and strategies that will drive the Centre’s goals. The symposium will close with a reflective session to discuss the next steps for the Centre and to create three working groups to (1) develop funding bids, (2) design business and engagement events, and (3) reimagine the university curriculum to incorporate biophilic principles and practices.
The process of datafication has intensified as a consequence of the availability and penetration of 5G, smart devices, IoT, AR and related technologies in everyday life. Datafication does not only imply the generation of new data but also capture how previously invisible activities and processes have been turned into data. The omnipresence of data can be tracked, monitored, and optimized, leading to new opportunities for scientific innovation, economic growth, betterment of wellbeing, community building, and improved risk management and governance. Such new opportunities are timely, given that human society is facing unprecedented risks such as global pandemics, natural disasters, climate change, war and conflict, etc. Responsible use of data by the scientific community, civil society and national and international governance bodies can develop key insights and applications relevant to decision making and resilience building. However, the process and activities of datafication also bring about challenges such as surveillance, insecurity, misinformation/conspiracies, discrimination and inequality, which leads to possible negative economic, social, ethical and political impacts.
The planned two-day event will take place in June 2024. Day 1 is featured by presentations from 10 speakers who will share their insights into the theorization of citizen data and sharing best practice of using citizen data for risk management and governance. Day 2 will feature themed workshops led by the members from the organizational committee. The workshop aims to bring scholars from different disciplines together and create conversation regarding the future agenda in the field of citizen data and risk governance. Outputs of the workshop include 1) a report that captures research themes emerging from the workshop that can be developed into future external funding applications; 2) a video journal that captures the highlights of the event which could be used for public engagement and impact evidence.
For several years, there has been a concern that recommendation algorithms may be amplifying harmful content to vulnerable users. This is often referred to as a “Filter Bubble” effect, in which users are gradually shown more content as they begin to interact with problematic material. This, according to the UK Government, is problematic because it means ‘that users do not see rebuttals or other sources that may disagree and can also mean that users perceive a story to be far more widely believed than it really is’ (HM Government 2018).
We want to engage policymakers on one of the most contentious and pressing societal issues today - the role of recommendations systems in promoting harmful content. We seek to create a two-way dialogue between ourselves and policymakers who will be front and centre in forthcoming regulation. Presently, we are stuck in the doldrums of anecdotal public debate and we seek to both inform and learn from those at the coalface and move forward with the wind in the sails. This workshop will be an interdisciplinary event that brings together researchers, tech practitioners and policy makers, to develop an agenda for research to understand and build resilience to the algorithmic amplification of online harms. Through the individuals and networks mentioned, it will offer up to 40 participants from the UK and beyond, the opportunity to share their research ideas and expertise in a supportive environment and develop new avenues for collaboration.
Communications around the need for climate action often emphasize the negative consequences of inaction, such as species extinction, natural disasters, and loss of life. These messages can be distressing and overwhelming, prompting reactions such as eco-anxiety and eco-paralysis. At a recent screening of the documentary "The Oil Machine" (https://www.theoilmachine.org/) at Swansea University, an audience member expressed despair and apprehension about the future and questioned if there was any reason to feel hopeful. People will have a wide range of strategies for dealing with negative climate-related emotions, many of which are often unhelpful over the longer term and inhibit effective action, for example denial and disavowal.
An alternative strategy for promoting climate action may be to communicate the benefits to people of acting in more sustainable ways. The discourse around psychological wellbeing has traditionally emphasized the individual, neglecting the impact of communities and environments on the wellbeing of individuals. However, recent advancements in wellbeing science offer a new framework that reinforces the interconnectedness and mutual dependence of wellbeing at an individual, collective, and planetary level (Kemp & Edwards, 2022; Mead et al., 2021). Initial work in the social sciences is beginning to note the ‘co-benefits’ of climate action, and there are increasing calls for what scholars have referred to as sustainable wellbeing, sustainable fulfilment, sustainable happiness, ecological wellbeing, or an alternative hedonism, to name just a few. At the heart of all these terms is the possibility that high levels of human wellbeing can be achieved by reducing environmental impacts and increasing care for, and connection to, the environment. Reframing climate messaging to highlight the possibility for sustainable futures that are fulfilling for people, communities, and the environment may prompt more positive climate-related emotions such as hope and motivation to change, which can help to move us beyond "Gidden's Paradox" (Giddens, 2015), in which the problem of the climate crisis feels so great that individuals feel powerless to act.
Thursday 13th & Friday 14th July 2023
This event will bring together scholars, practitioners, and activists from a broad range of sectors including economics, psychology, geography, theatre, and political science to explore two key overarching questions: (a) what are the constituents of sustainable wellbeing futures? and (b) how can the benefits of sustainable wellbeing futures best be
communicated to prompt positive climate action? In this way, the event seeks to move “out of the doldrums” with regard to negatively framed climate messaging and “with wind in the sails” into a positively framed alternative that is more aptly suited to driving climate action and enhancing wellbeing.
Natural Products are compounds derived from living organisms (plants, animals, microbes etc) that are developed into high value products such as therapeutics, nutraceuticals, and cosmeceuticals. Although much progress has been made in exploiting natural products, we have only tapped into a tiny fraction of what nature has to offer. Millions of people each year die or suffer from infections, diabetes, immune disorder, cardiovascular diseases and cancer. Many patients are dependent on drugs most of which were based on naturally derived compounds. For example, taxol from the yew tree is used to treat cancer, morphine from poppy is used for pain relief, penicillin from Penicillium is used to treat infections and galantamine from snowdrops is used to slow down the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. Prospecting for new bioactive compounds is highly dependent on interdisciplinary research and is becoming easier due to the advances made in areas such computational biology, artificial intelligence, high throughput screening and molecular biology. To accelerate discovery of new leads, it is critically important to optimize cooperation between stakeholders and exploit synergies between different disciplines.
Tuesday 18th & Wednesday 19th July 2023 - Great Hall, Bay Campus, Swansea University
This is a networking event to establish consortia of interdisciplinary expertise & innovative tools to fast track the research translation to the development of novel products and services.
Background: Electronic technologies are ubiquitous, from medical devices and lift controls, to communications satellites and the world wide web. We only achieved this modern breakthrough by bringing together specialists in materials, physics, software, human-computer interaction, communications, mathematics, engineering and medicine. However, computational technologies using conventional silicon transistors have reached a bottleneck; we are struggling to make silicon chips smaller, to reduce their power requirements, to increase their processing speed and to make them compatible with non-ideal environments. Progress in many fields that affect our lives will be impacted by this inability to continue improving conventional electronics based on semiconductor chips.
One way to address this is Unconventional Computation (UC). UC steps completely outside the traditional development of semiconductor microelectronics, and instead takes inspiration from natural systems. It includes collections of cells that perform computation (bio-molecular computing), brain-inspired nano-material networks that recognise shapes (neuromorphic image recognition) or the Antikythera mechanism – the world’s oldest analogue computer for making astronomical predictions (mechanical computing).
Just as traditional microelectronics required truly interdisciplinary input to reach its current pervasiveness, starting again and developing brand new computational methods inspired by nature will similarly require wide expertise. We propose to recognise the “preciousness of life” by using it to inspire novel computational techniques, which can only be realised by uniting cross-disciplinary research expertise.
Event information
Two-day workshop to explore new opportunities in natural and self-assembling systems that display emergent ‘computational’ behaviour, and the modelling and development of tools to understand and utilise those behaviours.
We will be joined by three externals speakers, and three external subject experts, to help explore how our research overlaps, and how this can be shaped to form new opportunities.
Themes include, but are not limited to, Programmable materials (neuromorphic, optic and biological materials, quantum computing); Self-assembling systems (materials, cells, swarms, behavioural biology, artificial life) and Computational biology.
To register for the event, or for more information, please contact Richard or Edwin. Deadline: Monday 27th June.
The workshop will be held on Thu 7th and Fri 8th July on the Bay Campus, with an evening networking event on Thu 7th. If you are unable to attend in person, please contact us to discuss alternative arrangements.
External Speakers
Prof Andrew Adamatzky, University of the West of England, UK
Dr Elena Agliari, The Sapienza University of Rome
Prof Simon Brown, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
External Advisors
Prof Paolo Milani, University of Milan, Italy
Prof Olivier Bournez, École Polytechnique, France
Dr Barbara Salonikidou, University of Cambridge, UK
Many sports are organised on lines of sex/gender segregation making them unique social and cultural practices that sit outside the normal rules of UK equalities legislation and policies. Segregation can make sense to help foster inclusion for women athletes given the physiological advantages that men exhibit. However, it breaks down when it comes to the inclusion of those athletes who do not fit easily into the binary classification system – such as transgender, non-binary athletes and athletes with differences in sexual development (DSD).
With high profile cases at the elite level posing issues of eligibility to ensure fair competition, at the participation level of sport the overriding problem is to provide a welcoming and inclusive environment for all athletes regardless of personal sex/gender characteristics.
We start with the question of how might sport develop inclusive policies and practices that delivers on the often-stated promise of ‘sport for all’. How can sport be inclusive, fair and safe for all those who wish to take part? Do we need different rules and criteria for different sports and for different levels within the same sport?
This unique international and interdisciplinary conference will examine these questions and many more through a truly interdisciplinary lens, involving academics, activists and sports policymakers. The conference will discuss the latest scientific developments and identify where more data is needed. It will examine the critical ethical issues that arise in this contested space. We will locate the problematics within extant and developing gender theory and human rights obligations. The conference will seek to inform policy as well as identifying the new research agendas that will be needed to put policymaking on solid groundings.
To undertake this task we have invited leading scholars, LGBTQ+ activists and sports policy officers to participate in the conference and to take part in respectful and evidence-based debates to explore the critical issues. The conference will aim to be the antidote to the shrill partisan posturing of the ‘culture wars’ favoured by some politicians and media outlets.
All our speakers are invited as having deep and unique knowledge of the issues and with a commitment to listening as well as contributing to the proceedings.
Invited international speakers include:
Irena Martinkova, Associate Professor of Kinanthropology and Jim Parry, Visiting Professor of Philosophy of Sport, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic
Madeleine Pape (she/her), Postdoctoral Researcher, Lausanne University, Switzerland
Francine Hetherington Raveney (she/her), Deputy Executive Secretary of the Enlarged Partial Agreement on Sport (EPAS), Council of Europe Council of Europe, Strasbourg, France
Prof Cesar Torres, SUNY Brockport (Brockport , NY), USA
The conference is funded by the Morgan Advanced Studies Institute and we thank them for their support.
Report on the Symposium - Preciousness of Life: Making Sports Fit for the Twenty-First Century
The data is irrefutable, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to human activity is the greatest driver of global warming. To prevent catastrophic climate change, carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced to zero in a relatively short timeframe; achieving net-zero is imperative to limit the rise in global temperature to 1.5˚C needed to preserve a liveable climate on earth.
The longer we take to get to net-zero, the more we will have to do to directly remove CO2 from our
atmosphere in an immensely expensive process of climate repair. The journey to net zero will not be easy; some technologies to tackle net zero do not yet exist, and new innovations are urgently needed, particularly for ‘difficult to decarbonise’ activities such as agriculture (underpinned by energy and water) and energy intensive industries, such as steel, glass, and chemicals. As a result, in May 2021, the Prime Ministers of the UK and India held high level talks regarding climate change and agreed urgent action through a joint UK-India Roadmap for 2030.
Plans for the MASI Agenda Setting Event are now well advanced. The event is scheduled for 13 – 15 Jul 2022 and will primarily take place in the School of Management, Bay Campus; on-site accommodation and meals are being provided.
The programme includes several networking opportunities making use of the atrium and breakout areas in the SoM, a gala dinner in the Great Hall, and visits to relevant research centres including SPECIFIC, CSAR, CWATER, and CADR.
What: bring together local/national/international thinkers to discuss:how can we use human-driven technologies and hip hop to
revolutionize wellbeing
Who: Participants from healthcare, computer science, planning, regeneration, education, youth services, arts, and young people.
When / Where: 24-25th June 2022 at Arts ARKADE, Swansea.
