The School of Informatics and Creative Arts hosted a gathering of postgraduate researchers on 8 May involving researchers from the Regulated Software Research Centre (RSRC) and Creative Arts Research Centre (CARC). The event celebrated ongoing research in the centres and provided a space for forthcoming international presentations.

There were five full-length conference style presentations on the day covering regenerative festivals, eco-critical theatre, diaries as historical documents, AI tools to filter hate speech, and developing software for flight simulator. The researchers involved, who are funded under the TUTF, DkIT CREATE and Research Ireland postgraduate funding schemes, are preparing for conferences in Ireland, Portugal, Czechia and the USA in the coming months.

There were a further ten flash presentations describing other research projects in the centres that led into an open discussion on creativity and the developments in Artificial Intelligence, with interesting transdisciplinary perspectives between the Informatics and Arts researchers.

In the afternoon, Dr Bridget Kelly from the Department of Life and Health Sciences facilitated a Lego play session on ‘Understanding Values’. The session helped people to conceptualise their research and articulate their values to each other.

The event facilitated by Dr Róisín Loughran and Dr Daithí Kearney aimed to bring together postgraduate researchers in a shared space, facilitate social connections and celebrate the initiative of students across the discipline areas. All involved are looking forward to the Pint of Science events in Dundalk, being hosted by researchers from the School of ICA on Monday 19th May and Wednesday 21st May in Mo Chara, and a variety of other dissemination events over the summer.