The 2024 Digital Media Research Centre and ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society Summer School saw over 150 delegates and presenters gather at QUT in Brisbane for an intensive five-day program.
Higher degree research students (HDRs) and early career researchers (ECRs) from across the globe were in attendance, networking and learning from over 50 DMRC and ADM+S senior researchers, industry guests and partner collaborators, through a range of workshops, panels and masterclasses
ADM+S Manager of Research Training and Development, and member of the Summer School working group Sally Storey, said “the program covered a wide territory of exciting research across the two Centre’s disciplines and topic areas.
“The Summer School showed us how much we can learn and benefit from both the DMRC and ADM+S’ extraordinary research community, and helped us sharpen questions, refine methods, enhance knowledge on cross-disciplinary research, and make connections both nationally and internationally.”
The program offered a week of inspiring and thought-provoking training by DMRC and ADM+S world-leading researchers.
Sessions ranged from ‘Hollywood’s Labour Crisis’, to ‘Dewesternising Research’, ‘Researching informal Media Industries’, ‘Creative Approaches to Research Translation’, and ‘Using Open AI to Classify, Annotate and Process Data’.
The program was designed to bring researchers, students and industry partners together, to share how they are confronting a range of Australian and global challenges in digital media industries and automated decision-making areas.
A key highlight of the program was keynote speaker Yoel Roth, Former Head of Trust and Safety at Twitter (now X), which emphasised the notion that we can’t rely on technical solutions for social problems.
Another highlight of the week for many students and senior researchers, were the one-on-one mentoring sessions tailored by our event organisers.
“It’s such a great opportunity to talk to people at the Centre who you don’t always have a chance to meet.
“It’s really reassuring to know that there’s a kind of model of work out there in the world that you might emulate, and that it might be just within your grasp,” said PhD student Zoe Horn.
The 2024 Summer School was designed to encourage participants to question, debate, and share their research with others.
“HDR students and ECRs are working at the forefront of media industry and ADM research, so fostering collaboration for meaningful discussions that will further collective knowledge is vital for offering fresh perspectives and insights,” said Dr Michelle Riedlinger, Chair of the 2024 Summer School.
We extend thanks to all our speakers, mentors, and student participants for making this event possible, and especially the DMRC and ADM+S working group for their hard work behind the scenes delivering this event so seamlessly.
View the 2024 Summer School photo library.