In this episode, I talk to Dr Federica Frabetti, associate professor in Digital Media at the University of Roehampton. Federica is a former software engineer, something we have in common, and her interdisciplinary work bridges the gap between technology and the humanities, focusing on Software Studies, critical AI studies, digital media, and cultural theory.
We talk about Federica's experience of the ascent of genAI in HE, the perspective of her students in a new module on AI for the creative industries, and a similar, new MA programme launched next year, and a lot of deep, theory-laden chat, which has prompted me to add references in the chaptering below, as well as a list of references - available here , as they won't fit in this episode description
00:00 Introduction
01:06 The arrival of gen AI in HE
02:31 (Liu et al., 2026)
03:24 (on transparency, q.v. Gonsalves, 2026)
04:02 AI as a pharmakon
05:32 Federica's monograph (Frabetti, 2015)
06:53 (Brooks, 1975 [1995])
07:40 (NATO's 1968/69 Software Engineering Conferences - Naur and Randell, 1968)
09:16 (on technical solutionism, q.v. Morozov, 2013)
10:09 (Frankfurt, 1988)
11:32 On students' perspectives on genAI
15:57 The new MA and its contents
17:01 (Berard, 2026)
17:24 (Minsky and Papert, 1969)
18:20 Federica's work in critical AI studies
18:48: (Drage and Frabetti, 2023)
18:55 (Browne et al., 2023)
19:03 (Drage and Frabetti, 2024b, 2024a)
19:53 (Barad, 2007)
23:54 Performativity in AI, education and research
24:22 (Bender and Koller, 2020)
25:41 (Berard, 2022)
27:32 (Searle, 1980)
29:16 (Stiegler, 1998)
30:41 On communicative intent
32:39 (On episteme and techne, q.v. Parry, 2024)
33:29 On students' criticality
36:01 (On LLM and reflective writing, q.v Li et al., 2023)
