Digital Futures Institute Unconference, King's College London
A participant-led unconference that gave 50 academics from across King's the agenda, the room and the day, and started expansive conversations about our relationships with AI that wouldn't otherwise have happened.
The brief: Convening cross-disciplinary researchers
The Digital Futures Institute exists to ask what our technological future could and should be, bringing technical innovation together with critical, thoughtful deliberation. That question can't be answered from inside one discipline. But universities are organised by discipline, and the colleagues best placed to think together about AI and humanity often never meet.
The Institute asked us to design and facilitate an event that would convene researchers from across the university around a single question: how do we navigate the complex relationship between technology and humanity in ways that enhance rather than diminish our lives? This was not a conference of panels and headline speakers, but a space where the participants set the questions.
What we did: Tear up the playbook
We designed the day as an unconference, and unconferences tear up the playbook. There were no lectures and no keynotes. Instead, 50 academics gathered at the top of Bush House, the BBC's former headquarters, and we guided them to build the programme themselves: anyone could propose a topic, host a conversation, and move between rooms as their curiosity led them. To help land people in this physical process, we kicked off with a ‘spectogram’ - asking participants to position themselves along a line in response to whether they agreed with statements like “I feel hopeful about humans’ future relationship with technology.”
What followed felt like a series of concurrent, highly stimulating coffee-break conversations, the kind that usually happen in the margins of a conference and here became the whole event. Among the headings participants chose:
- What, if anything, can the past teach us?
- Will AI lead to new forms of enslavement?
- In an increasingly automated world, do we still have a choice?
To support our design, we brought in live scribing by our partner Burograph to capture the thinking from every room, so ideas travelled between conversations as the day unfolded rather than staying with the people who happened to be there.
The Institute reported connections forming between colleagues who might not otherwise have met, new ideas and approaches, and cross-disciplinary collaboration it hopes will continue. It followed the unconference with a concept development workshop two months later to build on those conversations, alongside the launch of its 2026–27 Fellowship Scheme.
As universities face existential shifts from AI, we're now redeploying the unconference format to support generative and hopeful conversations across the UK's research community.
What people said
“I can't imagine a better format for generating networks and collaborations, as without the user-led structure, many of the most valuable conversations would not even have started.”
- Participant“It is mind-blowing how not asking for any outcome brings back the bigger outcomes, every time.”
- Professor Federico Turkheimer, participant"We were delighted to convene a vibrant community from across King's, fostering genuine connections between colleagues who might not otherwise have met, encouraging the creation of new ideas and approaches, facilitating rich communication across disciplinary boundaries, and sparking meaningful collaboration that we hope will continue to flourish.”
- Professor Kate Devlin, Chair-Director, Digital Futures Institute
Want to work together?
Say hello, and let's have an chat about how we can work together to spark creativity in your space.
Contact: [email protected]