By Professor Kate Pullinger

Professor of Creative Writing and Digital Media, Director of the Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries, Bath Spa University

My month-long Advanced Studies in the Humanities (ASH) Fellowship at the University of
Adelaide (March 2023), co-sponsored by Bath Spa University, University of Adelaide and
GALA, was productive and enjoyable. Adelaide is a lovely city, full of beautiful parklands,
amazing birdlife, and a tram service to the beach. March is a wonderful time to be in
Adelaide, with the early autumn weather and a plethora of arts and culture festivals to
enjoy. The University’s city centre campus is very green, with a great location on the river,
next to the Art Gallery of South Australia, as well as the city’s major museums, libraries, and
theatres.
During my time in Adelaide, I was able to make good headway with my own research and
writing – completing a redraft of my novel – and my conversations with my two primary
contacts at Adelaide, Prof Andrew Van der Vlies, the Interim Head of School of
Humanities/Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Business, Law, Economics (ABLE), and Prof
Patrick Flanery, Chair of Creative Writing, were productive. I also met with additional
members of the School and Faculty including Steve Cook – who runs the MA in Immersive
Media as well as the University’s impressive tech labs; Ed Palmer who works across
Education and ABLE and is in the process of setting up a new Centre for arts and technology,
an avenue for interdisciplinary work across the arts, tech, and education; Tom Hadju from
the SIA Fuller Institute; and Anne Pender, the new Director of the Coetzee Centre. There will
be a lot of activity around the work of the writers JM Coetzee and Patrick White this year as
it is the 20 th and 50 th anniversaries, respectively, of their Nobel Prizes.
AI AND CREATIVITY
A group of Adelaide academics are currently developing a one-year post-graduate
interdisciplinary diploma programme on AI and Creativity, which will offer modules from
Creative Writing, Music, Immersive Media and other related post-grad courses which may
provide an interesting model for other HEIs to emulate or adapt. Patrick Flanery and I have
plans to to develop a joint Adelaide/Bath Spa symposium on AI and Creativity – or, more
narrowly, AI and Writing – hopefully with support from/engagement with the GALA network
in collaboration with MyWorld, the UKRI-funded immersive media research project on
which I’m Co-Investigator. We discussed a one-day, two-part joint event, part one in the
southern hemisphere, part two in the north, or vica versa, online, with a mix of pre-
recorded content available to both hemispheres and live presentations across the two time
zones. We would plan this for 2024 when, hopefully, the discussions around AI and machine
learning will have become less ‘hot’ and more measured and more is understood about the
benefits and challenges of this new reality for artists, writers, and academics.
Thanks so much to GALA, Bath Spa and Adelaide for this opportunity!
April, 2023