Synthetic Pasts: Designing Memory in the Age of AI

Описание: The 2026 Diverse Perspectives in Digital Media & Design Speaker Series presents:

Synthetic Pasts: Designing Memory in the Age of AI

Dr. Jenny Kidd, leader Synthetic Pasts project and reader in digital culture, University of Cardiff, Wales

Wednesday, March 4, 2026, 5:30 PM EST

About the Topic

What happens when AI can speak, act, or even remember for someone who’s no longer alive? This talk introduces Synthetic Pasts, a research project exploring how AI is reshaping our relationship with memory, archives, and the past. Using the example of “Deathbots” — AI personas generated from a person’s digital remains —it asks how our pasts are increasingly mediated, contested, and sometimes commercialized by technology. The session invites you to consider practitioners’ responsibilities when designing, translating, or simulating memory in the age of AI.

About the Speaker

Formerly a web designer-developer, Dr. Jenny Kidd now researches digital culture. Recent publications have explored; algorithmic systems and digital memory, social media communications, and varied uses of immersive media. Jenny's research uses mixed qualitative and quantitative methods, as well as creative approaches.

Jenny is currently leading the Leverhulme Trust Synthetic Pasts project. You can find out more about the project in this short film, explore our work on 'deathbots' in this article for The Conversation (or short film), and access our collaboratively produced Responsible AI Afterlives Workbook for cultural professionals. The book AI Afterlives: digital memory and synthetic pasts will be published by Bloomsbury in 2026.

Jenny is a Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute (2024-2026) and a Research Fellow for the AHRC's Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre. Jenny has led a masterclass for the UK Government Digital Service, been an invited expert for Welsh Government and UK Parliament, and has appeared in the media and trade press, as well as on podcasts, to talk about her research. Jenny's books are Critical Encounters with Immersive Storytelling [with Alke Gröppel-Wegener, 2019], Representation: Key Ideas in Media and Cultural Studies [2015] and Museums in the New Mediascape: Transmedia, Participation, Ethics [2014]. Edited books include Challenging History in the Museum [2014, Routledge] and Performing Heritage [2011]. Jenny is series Co-Editor of Bloomsbury Studies in Digital Cultures.

This event is brought to you by the UConn Humanities Instititute and is part of its Artificial Intelligence and the Human Initiative

In collaboration with UConn’s Department of Digital Media & Design

LEARN MORE: https://dmd.uconn.edu/major/diverse-p...

About the 2026 Diverse Perspectives in Digital Media & Design Speaker Series:
To paraphrase James Baldwin, nothing can be changed until it is faced. This is certainly true of the inequities that have historically shaped digital media content, fields, and careers. Join UConn’s Digital Media & Design department in welcoming industry professionals, artists, and media scholars from the film, design, cultural, game, and other sectors to discuss how issues of equity manifest in their work, creative processes, and professions, allowing us to reflect on how our own practice can support greater equity, diversity, and inclusion.