Generative [ ] Intelligence
Tuesday 27 and Wednesday 28 October 2026, Arts West
Generative AI has become an inescapable part of everyday life and educational practice—for better and for worse. It is reshaping how students learn, how educators design curricula and assessment, and how we think about creativity, authorship, expertise and professional futures. It also raises urgent questions about equity, intellectual labour, environmental cost and the purposes of university education.
Yet teaching and learning cannot be reduced to AI. The title Generative [ ] Intelligence leaves the brackets deliberately open. What kinds of intelligence do we want education to generate and sustain—human, disciplinary, relational, creative, ethical, collective or artificial? What should we preserve, renew or reimagine as technology changes?
The 2026 Faculty of Arts Teaching and Learning Conference invites contributions that explore these questions through research, practice, reflection, provocation and collaborative inquiry. We welcome proposals from academic and professional staff, students, recent graduates and collaborators across the University and its partner communities. Tuesday 27 October will include a shared Arts–MDHS programme, while Wednesday 28 October will feature a shared day with the Global Humanities Alliance.
Global Humanities Alliance
The Global Humanities Alliance (GHA), co-chaired by the Associate Dean Global Kate McGregor, is proud to be partnering with the Education and Students portfolio in the Faculty of Arts this year to offer several GHA feature panels for day 2 of the annual Teaching and Learning Conference.
The GHA is a signature international initiative for the Faculty of Arts. It is one of eight founding members with Ashoka University (India), Mahidol University (Thailand), Pontifica Universidad Catolica de Chile (Chile), University of Toronto (Canada), Universitas Gadjah Mada (Indonesia), the University of Manchester (UK) and the University of Nairobi (Kenya).
The mission of the GHA is to raise the profile, social and political impact of the humanities and social sciences through an emphasis on research and teaching that takes up global issues, incorporates diverse global perspectives and brings scholars and students together with critical conversations. Launched in October 2024 the GHA today has 6 working groups on the themes of public humanities, decolonising knowledge, sustainability and climate change, democracy and institutions as well as a professional staff working group. It brings together over 120 scholars from 8 universities to engage in critical conversations. Every year the GHA meets at one institution to hold an AGM and a series of showcase events. For more about the Global Humanities Alliance, please visit the website or follow on LinkedIn and Instagram.
The GHA feature panels include:
- Critical Mapping as teaching and learning: Revealing the layers of campuses or cities
Chaired by Associate Professor Liz Dean (University of Melbourne): Associate Professor Mitul Baruah (Ashoka University), Dr Diah Kusumaningrum (Universitas Gadjah Madah), Professor Andreja Zevnik (University of Manchester) - Learning Sustainability with Place: Sensory, Affective, Imaginative and Situated Pedagogy, Creative Making and Practice
Chaired by Associate Professor Liz Dean (University of Melbourne): Associate Professor Nicole Klenk (University of Toronto), Associate Professor Paula Elena de Solminihac Castro (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile), and Philip Murunga, Sarah Alif Ibrahim and Professor Winnie Mitulah (University of Nairobi) - Teaching in Polarising Times: Pedagogy, Popular Culture and Political Self-Expression in the Age of Democratic Collapse
Chaired by Associate Professor Umut Ayidin (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile): Dr Sarah Walsh (University of Melbourne), Dr Ananya Sharma (Ashoka), Dr Diah Kusumaningrum (Universitas Gadjah Madah), Dr Krittika Bhattacharjee (Ashoka University), Dr Oscar Otele (University of Nairobi) - Building partnerships: the role of professional staff in the Global Humanities Alliance
Ms Amy Burton (University of Melbourne), Ms Ira Rajev (Ashoka University), Ms Bethany Pedder (University of Manchester), Ms Parada Peerachidacho (Mahidol University)
The GHA will also be showcasing in Arts West student work submitted for the competition "GHA Challenge: Democracy in Action” organized by the GHA Working Group on Democracy and Institutions.
Conference themes
Proposals might engage with one or more of the following broad areas:
- AI, curriculum and assessment — changing approaches to curriculum, assessment design, academic integrity and discipline-specific AI literacies.
- Risks and responsibilities — authorship, cognitive offloading, over-reliance on GenAI, intellectual labour, environmental implications and responsible educational practice.
- Human and relational learning — student agency and voice, belonging, critical and inclusive pedagogies, and relationships among learners, educators, knowledge and communities.
- Equity, access and digital environments — disability, neurodiversity, universal design for learning, digital accessibility, and the uneven effects of technological change.
- Experiential, creative and place-based learning — role-play, simulations, field and travel subjects, Indigenous knowledges, creative practice and learning beyond conventional classroom settings.
- Capabilities and futures — critical thinking, source evaluation, metacognition, ethical judgement, transferable skills, professional futures and civic life.
These are prompts, not fixed categories. We welcome proposals that move across them, approach the conference theme from another direction, or open a conversation we have not anticipated.
Formats
Format | What it is for | Duration |
Lightning talk | A concise reflection, provocation, question, argument, idea, or example of something that worked—or did not work—in teaching and learning. | 5 minutes |
Short presentation | A focused account of research, evaluation or developed practice that offers a clear argument, insight or finding. | 15 minutes |
Workshop or roundtable | A workshop should actively involve participants in exploring an idea or practice. A roundtable should bring together 3–5 contributors around a coherent theme and a diversity of perspectives. | 60 minutes |
Submitting a proposal
Abstract submission has now closed. The organising committee will reach out to all applicants by the end of September.
Registration
Registration for the conference will open in September. The conference will take place on Tuesday 27 and Wednesday 28 October 2026, in Arts West.
Contact
If you have any questions about the conference, please email: arts-ades@unimelb.edu.au
Past conferences
Information about previous conferences, including past programs and abstracts, can be found in this section.
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[…] intellect too, I repeat, has its beauty, and it has those who aim at it. To open the mind, to correct it, to refine it, to enable it to know, and to digest, master, rule, and use its knowledge, to give it power over its own faculties, application, flexibility, method, critical exactness, sagacity, resource, address, eloquent expression, is an object as intelligible […] as the cultivation of virtue, while, at the same time, it is absolutely distinct from it.
—John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University (London: Longman, 1891 [1852]), pp. 122-23Educating is always a vocation rooted in hopefulness. As teachers we believe that learning is possible, that nothing can keep an open mind from seeking after knowledge and finding a way to know it.
—bell hooks, Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope (New York and London: Routledge, 2003), p. xivIn 2025, the Faculty of Arts invited its educators and education support staff to a two-day conference on the value of education. In this second iteration of the Faculty of Arts Teaching and Learning Conference, we invited educators and education support staff to revisit the fundamental premises of our work. Is it true that our aim is to help students ‘open their minds’, as defenders of liberal education have argued for at least 150 years? Can we be confident that the ‘cultivation of intellect’ and ‘seeking after knowledge’ remain ends in themselves in the age of Generative AI? Whatever our aims are, how can we enact them in the twenty-first century classroom?
The conference was held on Tuesday the 28th of October and Wednesday the 29th of October 2025. The first day of the Teaching and Learning Conference was held in conjunction with the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences (MDHS). The shared day featured cross-faculty paper sessions and workshops.