Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, and AI Futures 2025

Datum: 14 oktober 2025, kl. 12.00–18.00
Plats: Blåsenhus, Sydney Alrutz Salen (13:026)
Typ: Workshop
Arrangör: Disciplinary Domain of Humanities & Social Sciences in collaboration with CDHU
Kontaktperson: Kailin Hatlestad

This workshop serves as a meeting ground for researchers across the humanities and social sciences to critically reflect on and help shape the evolving research agenda surrounding artificial intelligence at Uppsala University. We aim for a rigorous, interdisciplinary discussion that not only draws on Uppsala’s intellectual traditions but also welcomes active participation from other stakeholders—institutions deeply invested in knowledge creation, preservation, creativity and public engagement in our digital era.

Our central focus is AI Futures: an approach that emphasizes the importance of historically grounded, critically informed, and imaginative perspectives on the futures made possible—and contestable—by AI. Through this lens, we seek to articulate how HumSam disciplines, alongside public institutions, can help formulate epistemologically robust responses to technological change.

Epistemological Framing

This workshop invites investigation not only into what we study, but also into how we know and interpret. It is a chance to address foundational questions about reasoning, evidence, interpretation, and justification—placing AI in direct conversation with Uppsala’s traditions of critical, pluralistic inquiry. By assembling scholars, we hope to develop a shared profile for HumSam and AI that values context, diversity, and intellectual depth in service of our academic and societal futures.

Positioning Statement: Toward a HumSam & AI Futures Platform

This workshop is envisioned as a first step towards establishing a dynamic, interdisciplinary platform at Uppsala University focused on the intersection of humanities, social sciences, and AI. By inviting museums, archives, and the library into the conversation, we aim to shape a robust, outward-facing profile that honours Uppsala’s intellectual legacy while proactively engaging with contemporary societal and cultural transformations. Our longer-term objective is to build a recognised stream of research, teaching, and public engagement—anchored in rigorous epistemology and broad institutional partnerships—that positions Uppsala University and its collaborators at the forefront of critical AI studies.

PROGRAM OUTLINE

12:00 Lunch

13:00 Introduction & opening session

AI, Methods and Data: Directions for future research

Panel Presentations — (Hybrid format)

Crisp knowledge from messy data about the past – hopes for AI in archaeology (Daniel Löwenborg)
AI and Creative Data – A Law & HCI approach (Andreas Kotsios)
Existential AI (Amanda Lagerkvist)
AI, power and political communication (Alexandra Segerberg)
AI, Structural Change, and the Future of Work (Oskar Nordstrom Skåns)
AI and its markets: regulation and accountability (Magnus Strand)
Intimate AI: self-perception and embodied knowledge in the age of automation (Lina Eklund)
AI and computational linguistics – challenges and opportunities (Sarah Stymne)
AI workflows for Data Equality in Cultural Heritage: the African example (Ashleigh Harris)
Restoring Ancient Literary Fragments with Machine Learning (Eric Cullhed)
Educational AI for inclusive education (Wilhelmina Statham)
Understanding innovation through the lens of AI: Past, present, future (Fredrik Tell)
Law & AI (Katja de Vries)
Cobwebs, Not Arrows: An AI Map of Multimodal Metaphor (Jan von Bonsdorff)

Discussion with all participants

14:15 Coffee break

14:45 Plenary synthesis

Scholars make suggestions for an AI/ HumSam initiative in working groups

16:00- 16:30 Concluding plenary

Presentations from groups, next steps for research, education, and public engagement

16:30- 18:00 Reception and mingle

Online registration is now closed.

Please contact Matts Lindström (matts.lindstrom@abm.uu.se) and Kailin Hatlestad (kailin.hatlestad@uu.se) for more information.