Humour and citizenship are related on their structure of inclusion and exclusion. The reach of the digital world, as it brings communities and individuals into contact across physical distances, and the questions of visibility and invisibility surrounding the emergence of AI to intensify humorous practices of citizenship and crystallise debates over exclusion and inclusion into specific communities including that of humanity itself, when we ask if AI is conscious, comparing it to ourselves as we presume ourselves to the be the only or primary vessels of consciousness.

You do not need any prior knowledge of AI to enjoy this event.

This event is part of the ‘Digital Decolonisation: Visibilities and Invisibilities in the Age of Algorithms’ series which begins on Tuesday 20 May with ‘Decolonisation in the Age of AI’ and continues on Thursday 22 May with ‘AI as a Decolonial Tool for Peace and Justice’. . You may also be interested in 'Decolonising AI with Memes: A Practical Way to Critically Engage AI in Teaching and Learning' on Friday 23 May.

Register on Eventbrite. This event will be hybrid, with the option for you to attend in-person or online.

Speakers

Dr Clyde Ancarno (Chair) is Senior Lecturer in Linguistics and Education in the Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy, King's College London. Clyde is a member of the the Centre for Language, Discourse & Communication (ECS research group). Her work in the field of applied linguistics involves (digital) discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, corpus-assisted discourse studies/CADS, pragmatics and ethnography.

Dr Christoffer Guldberg is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy, King’s College London. He has written extensively on the war on drugs and online activism and violence in Brazil and beyond. His teaching methods have been published as blogs and a peer-reviewed article at King’s Academy, the University of Warwick, and the King’s Decolonial Blog, undotcomfortable, and he has a podcast on decolonising AI at King’s - a Mostly Human Podcast. 

Mireille Kouyo is a PhD student, jointly studying with the African Leadership Centre at King’s College London and the University of Pretoria. Her research explores the empirical reality of what local actors are doing at the grassroots level and seek to understand the relationships between actors in the process of building positive peace. She has previously co-organised a workshop on ‘Decolonising the Researcher’.

Professor Britta Timm Knudsen is Professor of Culture, Medias and Experience Economy at the Department of Scandinavian Studies and Experience Economy at the University of Aarhus, Denmark. Her research focuses on difficult heritage, affect and event studies, tourism and social media. Between 2018-2021 she was PI of ECHOES (European Colonial Heritage Modalities of Entangled Cities) funded by EU- Horizon 2020 and is currently PI of Playing with ghosts. Affective ambivalence in decolonial art practices funded by Aarhus University. 

Dr Erkan Tümkaya is a Research Associate at the Arnold-Bergstraesser-Institute (ABI) Freiburg, Germany. He teaches on Migration Mobilities at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Freiburg. He studied Social Anthropology and holds a PhD from the University of Cologne. His new project focuses how refugees from the Middle East living in Germany use different modes of humour in everyday life and in digital spaces as a tool of contesting far-right political aspirations.

King's Festival of Artificial Intelligence

This event is part of the King’s Festival of Artificial Intelligence. Running from Tuesday 20 May to Saturday 24 May, the free, five-day festival brings together a diverse line-up of experts to consider critical questions about artificial intelligence in the context of healthcare, education, sustainability, policy, and creativity.

Festival events will take place across several King’s venues, so please check carefully where the event is taking place. Festival event times may be subject to change. Any changes will be communicated to attendees via Eventbrite emails.

Please note, King's events are free, which means we routinely overbook to allow for no-shows and avoid empty seats. Admission is on a first come, first served basis, so please arrive in good time to avoid disappointment. We will not be able to admit those without tickets or latecomers.