Responsible AI in Practice Summit 2026

8 - 9 June 2026: De Montfort University, Hugh Aston Building

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AI with Integrity: Shaping Tomorrow’s Professional Practice

At the Responsible AI in Professional Practice Summit, leaders, innovators, and practitioners come together for a vibrant day of exploration, debate, and hands-on learning. The event brings together expert speakers from industry, academia, policy, and design to unpack what responsible AI truly means in real-world professional settings and how to put it into action.

From keynote provocations to lightning talks, the summit spotlights diverse views on ethics, governance, and the rapidly evolving responsibilities facing professionals who use or plan to deploy AI in their work.

Interactive workshops form the heart of the summit, offering participants space to discuss practical tools, frameworks, and case studies.  The attendees will navigate the pros and cons of AI adoption in their professional practice, from efficiency gains and innovation opportunities to the risks of bias, opacity, decision responsibility, human oversight, safety-critical systems, and over-automation.

Facilitators are to guide small-group sessions on topics such as auditing AI systems, designing transparent workflows, safeguarding data integrity, and building trust with stakeholders. Each workshop is designed to be hands-on, reflective, and immediately applicable to participants’ organisations.

The day closes with a question-and-answer “The Future of Responsible AI Panel,” where delegates synthesise insights into actionable roadmaps tailored to their fields—whether in research, public service, or industry practice.

What sets this summit apart is its commitment to empowering professionals to use AI not just effectively, but responsibly and confidently.

By the end of the event, attendees leave inspired, informed, and equipped to champion AI that serves society with fairness, accountability, and strategic clarity.

Day one (academic audience) - 8 June

Morning

Arrival & welcome

  • 9:00 - 9:30am: Registration and refreshments
  • 9:30 - 9:40am: Welcome - Professor Daniela Romano
  • 9:40 - 10am: Address - Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Mike (Michail) Kagioglou

Keynotes

  • 10:00 - 11:00am: Moving Fast and Not Breaking Things: AI-Enhanced Engineering for Safety-Critical Industries
    Frazer Bennett-Wilford (Aspect Capital)
    About this keynote

    This keynote explores how AI is changing the way software is built, and why safety critical and low risk tolerance industries must adopt it differently. Rather than framing AI as something to either fully embrace or reject, the talk argues for disciplined integration through tight human AI loops that preserve understanding and judgement. It introduces practical frameworks for thinking in systems, engineering context, and validating outputs, with a central message: AI can accelerate engineering, but only when humans remain accountable for intent, verification, and outcomes. Used well, AI makes engineers faster without making them blind.

    Frazer Bennett-Wilford is a software engineer at Aspect Capital working in a low risk tolerance financial environment. Alongside his broader production engineering work, he focuses on the responsible use of AI in engineering workflows, with an emphasis on human oversight and accountability.

  • 11:00am - 12:00pm: AI as mirror and canvas - a method for critical thinking with and about artificial intelligence
    Dr Christoffer Guldberg (KCL)
    About this keynote

    This talk will outline a participatory method for teaching with and about AI by seeing AI as a mirror and a canvas (Guldberg forthcoming). This approach to AI means treating it as a mirror of society's biases and (in)visibilities and a canvas to imagine and enact different and alternative ways of knowing and being. In this process visual outputs become prompts for critical analysis and discussion and a canvas for creative interventions that draw, mix and paint, producing creative online memes. In this process, the method is useful both for teaching critical thinking, diversity, equity and inclusion, and a vehicle for exploring human vs AI creativity and agency.

    Christoffer Guldberg is a researcher and educator working on decolonial pedagogy, digital ethnography, and critical approaches to AI in education and research. As an affiliate of the King's Institute for Artificial Intelligence, his recent work has focused on developing and implementing his concepts of AI as mirror and AI as canvas as a framework for critically and creatively engaging generative AI in teaching, learning and research. More broadly he focuses on critical AI literacy, multimodal and participatory methods, and the co-production of knowledge across digital and educational settings. He has published on humour, citizenship, and state violence in Critical African Studies (2024) and Citizenship Studies (2026), and on technology-assisted active learning and decolonising pedagogy in the Journal of PGR Pedagogic Practice (2022). He has also organised and contributed to workshops and public events on decolonising AI, responsible generative AI, and critical digital pedagogy at Advance HE, UCL and KCL among others. He has three book chapters currently under review and in-press on the use of AI and visual methods in education and research.

12:00 to 1:00pm Lunch

Afternoon

1:00 - 1:30pm: Thematic presentations (in parallel)

  • RIDAN Charter
    Prof. Riri Fitri Sari (University of Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia)
    About this presentation

    Prof. Riri Fitri Sari is a tenure track Professor of Computer Engineering at the Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Indonesia (UI). She was the CIO/Head of Information System Development and Services of the University of Indonesia (2006-2014). In 1997, she received her MSc in Software Systems and Parallel Processing of Department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield, UK and subsequently a PhD from Leeds University, UK (2004). She is currently actively teaching and researching in the field of Internet of Things, Blockchain, Computer Network, Protocol Engineering, and the implementation of AI into Intelligent solutions for Computing and Communications. She is the founder of UI Green Metric World University Ranking in 2010 and was the chairperson of that global movement on sustainability. She has been appointed as an Honorary professor at RUDN University, Moscow, National Pingtung University of Science and Technology (NPUST) (2024), and Kaznau Kazakhstan (2017). She received the Prestigious Habibie Prize in Engineering

  • Digital Pedagogy & AI
    Dr Thom Corah (DMU)
    About this presentation

    The creative industries have been heavily impacted by the development of generative AI. Many creative practitioners have lost work because clients are turning to tools that are cheaper and on-demand. Workflows and production pipelines across the industry are changing rapidly, enabling creatives to iterate quickly and work more productively.

    In this talk Thom will present the latest research on the use of AI in the creative and cultural industries collated from a range of sources. He will use this as the context for a range of approaches that aim to prepare students for an evolving landscape and ground them in the lifelong skills that will help them thrive. Although targeted on the creative industries, there are approaches here that are applicable across the wider institute, approaches that are rooted in the very human skills of critical thinking, creativity, and communication and developed with a respect for the wide-ranging views of both staff and students.

    Dr Thom Corah is the School Lead for Digital Pedagogy and AI in the School of Creative Industries and Culture at DMU. With a background in Music Technology, Augmented Reality, and Cultural Heritage, he is no stranger to the notion of a cross-over between technology and art.

  • The Role of AI Frameworks in Responsible AI Governance
    Dr Kutoma Wakunuma (DMU)
    About this presentation

    This talk will focus on how emerging AI frameworks can support more ethical, inclusive, and accountable approaches to the design, deployment, and oversight of AI systems. Drawing on perspectives from responsible innovation, ethics, and global policy. The talk examines the strengths and limitations of existing AI governance frameworks, highlighting whose values they prioritise and whose voices are often marginalised. Particular attention is given to the relevance of context, especially differences between the Global North and Global South, and the need for governance approaches that address power, inclusion, gender, and social justice. The talk concludes by reflecting on how AI frameworks can be meaningfully operationalised to move beyond compliance towards genuinely responsible and socially beneficial AI.

    Dr Kutoma Wakunuma is an Associate Professor in Information Systems at De Montfort University (UK). Her research focuses on the social and ethical implications of emerging technologies, with particular attention to responsible innovation, AI governance, ICT for development (ICT4D), gender, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, across both the Global North and Global South. She is an independent ethics expert and evaluator for the European Commission, a member of UNESCO's Women for Ethical AI, and UNESCO's AI Ethics Experts without borders. She has contributed to high level international AI and policy forums. Dr Wakunuma has also co edited influential works on Responsible AI from African perspectives and is widely recognised for advancing inclusive and globally representative technology governance debates.

  • Good Enough Ethics by Design
    Prof. Kathleen Richardson & Dr Bryson
    About this presentation

    Is it possible to design perfect systems that embed ethical values? Is it possible to transfer ethics from people and the organisation of society to the production of things? While there are global calls for ethics by design, the reality of this challenge is beset with many problems. Moreover, there's no knowing if a human ethical value, when transferred in some way to technological practices, processes or artifacts will produce and intended outcome. In recognising the historical, cultural, political and technical challenges of produces ethics by design, we proposed Good Enough Ethics by Design (GEE). This applied ethical practice was developed as part of the EU funded VR/XR/AR/AI project: SHARESPACE. Developed from the idea of Good Enough Parenting, GEE starts on the basis that people are constrained by realities, and that ethical reasoning should be held with people primarily, not with things. This talk will present the theory and some of our recent findings

    Kathleen Bryson is a Senior Research Fellow investigating EU virtual reality ethics. She received her PhD in Evolutionary Anthropology at UCL in 2017. Originally from Alaska, she holds an MA in Independent Film (LCP/University of the Arts London) and two BA degrees in Anthropology and Swedish, respectively (University of Washington). She has held postdoctoral positions at University of Oxford, Queen Mary University of London and De Montfort as a Horizon Europe Research Fellow, co-creating the Good Enough Ethics framework with XR project SHARESPACE.EU. As a novelist and painter, her creative work often explores evolutionary themes. She recently has been featured in Forbes and Popular Mechanics.

1:30 - 2:00pm: Coffee

2:00 - 4:00pm: Workshops (in parallel)

4:00 - 4:30pm: Panel discussion

Day two (academia & applied sectors) - 9 June

Morning

Arrival & welcome

  • 9:00 - 9:30am: Registration and refreshments
  • 9:30 - 9:45am: Welcome - Prof. Rachel Granger

Keynotes

  • 10:00 - 11:00am: A Call to Arms: How AI is Rewriting Business Itself
    Ann Stanley (ANICCA)
    About this keynote

    80% of businesses are still stuck on ChatGPT. Is your business any different?

    The more advanced have moved on to CustomGPTs trained on their own brand and knowledge. A few have started using n8n Automations, or more recently migrated to Claude Projects or Claude Code.

    But in almost every case, AI is being used in pockets, not as a connected system. The team is working in silos. Most of the benefit gets lost there.

    The businesses that will benefit from this revolution are the ones reviewing their processes and workflows and creating a company-wide AI Operating System or AI-OS.

    Ann Stanley, founder and CTO of Anicca Digital and Anicca AI & Insights, will illustrate this approach with Anicca's own AI journey, from ChatGPT, to n8n Automations, Claude Code, and now a full AI operating system that runs across the whole business.

    The talk covers:

    • The AI Adoption Ladder: where most businesses sit today, and what the next rung looks like
    • The three types of AI most people confuse: AI Assistant, AI Automation and AI Agent
    • Why most teams are using AI in silos, and what an integrated AI operating system actually changes
    • The C-10 Framework, the diagnostic Anicca uses to find AI use cases that matter most in any business
    • Anicca's C4- Company Command & Control Centre, as a worked example of the AI Operating System that an AI-enabled business now needs

    Attendees will leave with the knowledge and methodology to develop their own AI Adoption Roadmap

  • 11:00am - 12:00pm: AI and the Way Work Gets Done
    Irina Gokh and David Boye BAL
    About this keynote

    Most of us treat AI as something we add on top of how we already work. Bolt it onto the process, speed it up, move on. This session starts somewhere else: what happens when AI does not sit on top of the work but at the heart of it, reshaping who does what, when, and why?

    Drawing on a series of hands-on experiments with agent-shaped tools, this talk opens up the question underneath. When AI changes the shape of a workflow, what are we actually being paid for? It looks at what it takes to unlearn your own processes, why fluency with these tools compounds rather than completes, and why, in an AI-shaped workflow, responsibility is the one thing that cannot be delegated. What's left at the centre is judgement, and the work of building it starts with you.

    Expect worked examples, a few honest pitfalls, and a clear-eyed view of what these tools are actually changing and what they're not.

    Dr Irina Gokh is an Associate Professor and Associate Head (Education) in the Leadership, Management and Marketing School at De Montfort University, and a National Teaching Fellow. She leads the school's AI strategy and convenes a working group of colleagues exploring how artificial intelligence can be embedded into teaching without compromising what learning is for.

    Her work focuses on integrating digital and AI tools into meaningful learning contexts, where the technology serves as an environment for thinking, analysis, and decision-making rather than a shortcut around them. She designs learning experiences that bring physical and digital spaces together, enabling students to engage with complex problems and the kinds of ambiguity they will encounter in professional practice.

    Irina's approach is centred on how learning is experienced and applied on the conditions under which people build the judgement to make informed decisions in unfamiliar contexts. She shares her work publicly through her digital platforms, contributing to conversations on teaching, learning, and professional practice in a changing technological landscape.

    Dr David A Boye is a Senior Lecturer in Business Management, a Fellow in higher education, Artificial Intelligence Lead for Business Management (UG) and the Deputy Programme Lead for BA Business Management Suite at the School of Leadership, Management, and Marketing, Leicester Castle Business School within the Faculty of Business and Law, De Montfort University, UK specializing in Innovation Management, Digital Innovation, Crowdsourcing, and Financial Technologies.

12:00 - 1:00pm: Lunch

Afternoon

1:00 - 1:30pm: Thematic presentations (in parallel)

  • Agentic AI and Your Business: Promise or Peril?
    Ming Lim
    About this presentation

    Agentic AI can be transformational for any business. At a fundamental level, it can change how your organisation values data and how customers perceive your value.

    It enables a shift from demographic coding to individual-level psychographic insight, from broad omni-channel messaging to predictive intelligence, and from expensive trials to targeted opportunities.

    However, there are risks that few experts discuss and even fewer businesses fully understand.

    This session provides a balanced view of what agentic AI can do for your business, helping you identify new pathways of engagement and establish a clear direction of travel with informed support from DMU's Faculty of Business and Law.

    Dr Ming Lim (PhD, MPhil, MA, BA, FHEA) is an established researcher whose career has focused on the impacts of emerging technologies and ethics, artificial intelligence in social marketing, consumer culture and the global branding of socially and culturally disruptive technologies. Her current research on AI and ethics focuses on its impacts on sustainability advertising and marketing in multinational contexts. She is currently investigating the impact of AI on underprivileged and emerging economic actors in healthcare, heritage preservation, and luxury fashion retail. Her research has been featured in The Conversation and appears in leading journals such as Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Macromarketing and Luxury Studies. She has worked with several companies on successful Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs) in the Midlands and Rutland, consistently using her experience and enthusiasm to advance industry-focused collaborations.

    Ming has been awarded over £950,000 in external funding from the AHRC/ESRC, NIHR, Health England, the Living Wage Foundation, the Precision Medicine Institute and PhD-funded research from Collaboratory. Her research has been exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum and featured on numerous media platforms. Prior to joining DMU, Ming held senior positions at the Universities of Leicester and Liverpool.

  • The DMU Business Solutions Business Clinic - How we can support SME growth
    Rachel Granger & Ellie Hickman
    About this presentation

    Ellie and Rachel will provide an outline of DMU Business Solutions, a business clinic supporting Leicestershire-based SMEs and charities to tackle the barriers that prevent growth. We will be outlining how DMU can provide subsidised and free development support through the clinic, and what areas of strategic and technical expertise would be helpful for businesses to develop to their full potential. We will outline the track record we have through case studies with MOSAIC and Helping Hands.

    Professor Rachel Granger is Professor of Urban Economies at Leicester Castle Business School, De Montfort University. Rachel's research and teaching interests are directed towards practice-based issues for cities in advanced societies and in shaping regional economic development. Her work includes aspects of inclusive economic growth, sector and cluster growth strategies, smart and experimental governance, and civic sustainability. Rachel has led on substantial projects developing the East Midlands creative industries, regenerating the fashion and textiles industry, and developing innovation and smart strategies. Rachel is currently working on national development of civic investment strategies with the Connected Places Catapult, and in developing community wealth building through civic bonds in as an alternative model for urban and regional economic growth.

    Rachel is also the director of De Montfort University's Institute for Responsible Business and Social Justice with its priorities on research in circular practice, technology, sustainable business growth, inclusive international development, and inclusive societies. At the forefront of their work is the idea of empowering through impact, and in developing partnership with purpose in tackling today's societal and business needs. The Institute is especially interested in collaborating in areas of creative industries and manufacturing, digital health, investment in sustainability, new technology as a basis for innovation, executive education in business sectors, and place-based leadership.

  • Leading Meaningful, Responsible AI Transformation
    Abiodun Egbetokun and Adebowale Owoseni
    About this presentation

    AI adoption brings numerous benefits; it also fundamentally alters workplace dynamics; Ethical leadership and psychological safety are critical mediating factors in whether transformation succeeds or causes harm (Kim, et al. ,2025). In spite, most conversations about digital and AI transformation eventually turns to platforms, tools, and technology roadmaps. As research consistently shows, digital and AI transformation is not primarily a technology problem, it is a people and culture problem. Kane et al. (2019) argue compellingly that organisations fixated on technology as the driver of transformation routinely underestimate the human, cultural, and leadership dimensions that determine whether transformational change takes root.

    This workshop brings a more pragmatic lens to digital and AI transformation, exploring what it takes for businesses to deliver meaningful, responsible value-driven change that lasts. Drawing on real-world experience, we will examine how organisations can align AI initiatives with what they are genuinely trying to achieve, bring their people with them through the discomfort of change, and build the internal capabilities needed to sustain progress in a landscape that shows no signs of settling.

    Participants will leave with clearer frameworks for thinking about transformation, practical insights they can carry back into their own contexts, and a grounded, responsible approach to pursuing AI-driven change.

    Reference

    Kim, BJ., Kim MK., and Lee, J (2025) The dark side of artificial intelligence adoption: linking artificial intelligence adoption to employee depression via psychological safety and ethical leadership, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 12, Article 704. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-025-05040-2

    Kane, G.C., Palmer, D., Phillips, A.N., Kiron, D. and Buckley, N. (2019) The Technology Fallacy: How People Are the Real Key to Digital Transformation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Before transitioning to academia in 2019, Dr. Adebowale Owoseni built a 13-year career in the financial services sector, where he led and delivered large-scale digital transformation initiatives that enabled organisations to derive measurable value from data and digital investments.

    He now leverages this industry experience in his academic role to bridge theory and practice across teaching, research, and industry collaboration. His work focuses on digital transformation, AI adoption, fintech, and data analytics, alongside curriculum design, apprenticeship delivery, and executive education. This combined expertise positions him strongly to lead practice-oriented, research-informed workshops, particularly in supporting SMEs and organisations navigating responsible digital and AI transformation. Dr Abiodun Egbetokun is currently an Associate Professor at De Montfort University, Leicester. He specialises in innovation systems and the responsible application of emerging technologies. His research examines how organisations translate digital and AI capabilities into sustainable value, with particular emphasis on governance, policy, and inclusive outcomes. He works closely with academics, industry partners and policymakers to support meaningful and responsible AI enabled transformation in business and society.

  • Human and Machine: Systems thinking, redefining work, value and growth
    Emrah Bilgic
    About this presentation

    This presentation explores how AI is moving beyond simple automation to become embedded within complex, interconnected systems of people, data, and technology. Drawing on real-world applications from different sectors, the session will examine what AI systems actually do step by step, how they reshape work, redefine value, and transform organizational processes, and what evidence supports these changes. The discussion will highlight how human judgment and machine intelligence interact within these systems, offering practical insights into responsible AI in practice.

    Dr. Emrah Bilgic is a Lecturer in Business Analytics and AI Lead at DMU Business School, with over fifteen years of experience in higher education. He holds an Associate Professorship in Information Systems from Türkiye and has extensive expertise in teaching analytics-related subjects at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. His teaching portfolio includes Operations Research, Operations Management, Project Management, Marketing Analytics, Statistical Decision Making, and Research Methods. Dr. Bilgic’s approach integrates strong theoretical foundations with practical applications, equipping students with the analytical and decision-making skills needed to address real-world business challenges.

1:30 - 2:00pm: Coffee

2:00 - 4:00pm: Workshops (in parallel)

4:00 - 4:30pm: Panel - next steps and roadmapping

With thanks to:

This summit was brought together by colleagues from across DMU.

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