REF: AI? A seminar with Richard Watermeyer (University of Bristol)
| Dates: | 20 November 2025 |
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| Times: | 14:00 - 15:00 |
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| What is it: | Lecture |
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| Organiser: | School of Environment, Education and Development |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, Current University students |
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In this talk I will present emerging findings from a study of how generative AI (GenAI) is impacting the UK's Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2029. By means of national consultation with 17 UK universities (with small-to-large REF returns), the REF:AI study has explored how generative AI is being currently used, prospectively used, and/or otherwise resisted in responding to the demands of the REF, while also elucidating perspectives on the application of GenAI by REF panels. Discussion will focus on the efficacy of GenAI tools as relates to the REF as a site of expert decision-making associated with significant, and some argue, unsustainable resource demands. It considers the future of the REF as a technology of research governance infused with or substituted by GenAI and thus by extension the trajectory of research assessment and research itself.
Richard Watermeyer is Professor of Higher Education and co-director of the Centre for Higher Education Transformations (CHET) at the University of Bristol. His research is predominantly concerned with sociological analyses of disruption and change impacting the organisation and enactment of academic labour and governance of universities and science. He is a Senior Fellow of the Centre for Higher Education Leadership and Policy Studies at the Education University of Hong Kong; a Fellow of the Center for Organization Research and Design at Arizona State University; and Associate of the Centre for Higher Education Education Studies at the UCL Institute of Education. He is principal investigator for the Research England funded, REF:AI project.
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A2.6
Ellen Wilkinson Building
Manchester
