What does it take to make new digital futures for education?

Wed Jun 10 2026 at 05:15 pm to 07:00 pm UTC+01:00

Edinburgh Futures Institute | Edinburgh

Moray House School of Education and Sport
Publisher/HostMoray House School of Education and Sport
What does it take to make new digital futures for education?
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Please join us for Professor Jen Ross' inaugural lecture on the digital futures for education.
About this Event

This event is part of the Stewart Alan Robertson Lecture Series


Abstract

Many past dreams for digital technologies in education, including my own, foregrounded their capacity to foster meaningful connections and new forms of knowledge production. However, these technologies can also increase fragmentation, surveillance and extraction, and these negative capacities currently outweigh the positive for many people, ecosystems and communities around the world. What is left of past positive aspirations, what visions of digital education do we currently need, and how can we create the conditions for better futures to flourish? In this lecture, I will reflect on my work over the past 15 years, including on open and online learning, digital cultural heritage engagement, and technologies of automation in education. I will share what I’ve learned about how digital technologies shape and are shaped by issues of power, audience, surveillance, trust and openness. And I’ll argue that, to make new digital futures, it is necessary to speculate, imagine and experiment with technologies and the practices and relations around them.


Lecture Details
Venue: Edinburgh Futures Institute, 2.55 and Teams (online joining link will be emailed to all attendees alongside booking confirmation)
Lecture: 17:15-18:00
Q&A: 18:10-18:30
Reception: 18:30-19:00


Please note that this lecture will be recorded.


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Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Edinburgh Futures Institute, Room 2.55, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Tickets

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