Members Workshops

If you are interested in hosting one of these events, you will find information on what you will need to do on this page.


Since September 2012, the AISB has been hosting a series of one or two day workshops across the country. The first two workshops were both held at Goldsmiths, the third was hosted at St Mary’s University, while the most recent were held in Bournemouth University and the University of Birmingham. Further information about these previous events can be found below. A number of publications have already arisen from these events, the most recent of which was a Symposium Issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies and a book published by Springer on Contemporary Sensorimotor Theory.

These events are abstract-only and free for all AISB members. Refreshments (coffee and teas), and some reasonable travel costs can be funded by the AISB. More details on application. Current non-members would be able to attend for the cost of AISB membership, which they will be asked to arrange and pay for in advance by submitting a completed application form to the Executive Office. They would then be eligible to a year’s membership of the Society. This applies to speakers and audience alike.

In order to propose a workshop, you will need to complete a brief application with the following details:

  • Workshop title
  • Workshop abstract (200-­400 words approx.)
  • Organiser(s) and main contact (include details of expertise in proposed topic)
  • Host Institution details (name, address)
  • Planned dates and deadlines for the following
    • Abstract Submission
    • Notification of Decision
    • Registration
    • Workshop
  • Possible speakers (e.g. do you plan to invite speakers?)
  • Where you would advertise (e.g. could you create a page on your institution website?)

Additional details for hosting the workshops can be found here (including what you need to do before, during, and after). For more information you can also contact Dr Yasemin J. Erden, Workshop Series Organiser (yj.erden@stmarys.ac.uk) with any questions.

Past Workshops


Workshop VII: Serendipity Symposium

15 June 2017

On June 15th, 2017, we will be holding a one-day symposium on the theme of ‘serendipity’. This will be the first attempt to gather the world’s leading ‘serendiptologists’ in one room. Our aim is for this event to bring together researchers in computing, the arts, sciences, and other fields of cultural endeavor. To mark the historic nature of this occasion we plan to meet in the Waldegrave Drawing Room at St Mary’s University, adjacent to Strawberry Hill House, the gothic castle in Twickenham built by Horace Walpole, who invented the concept of ‘serendipity’ in 1754. A tour of Strawberry Hill House will be included in the programme. 

This symposium is part of the AISB Member Symposium series, and registration is free for AISB members.

Workshop VI: Agent-Based Models of Bounded Rationality

7-8 May 2015

This workshop, Agent-Based Models of Bounded Rationality was held 7-8 May 2015 in Slagelse, University of Southern Denmark, and it was organized by Davide Secchi and Stephen J. Cowley. The purpose of this workshop was that of exploring how agent-based models (ABM) can either build on existing knowledge on bounded rationality (BR), find alternative/complementary con- ceptualizations, or move away from the original concept. More information on this workshop, including some of the slides are available on the workshop’s website (https://sites.google.com/site/abmworkshops/)

 

Workshop V: Figurative language: its patterns and meanings in domain-specific discourse

18-19 August 2014

This two-day workshop held at The University of Birmingham on 18-19 August 2014, aimed to provide a venue for researchers to communicate recent results from their efforts to model how forms of figurative language such as metaphor and metonymy are used to communicate domain-specific information (e.g. in political discourse, presenting an argument can be described as “attacking an opponent’s position”, or in health discourse, infection can be described in terms of microbes “attacking someone’s body”). The workshop was jointly organized through the University’s Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS) as well as the AISB, with the IAS generously sponsoring a number of invited talks by key researchers in the field. The 15 talks across 4 sessions were complemented with open discussion slots spread throughout both days. Participants came from various countries, including the U.K., Italy, Ireland, Germany, Spain and the U.S.A, and from disciplines as diverse as artificial intelligence, linguistics, architecture, psychology, literary studies, computer science and philosophy.

Link to page

Workshop IV: Modelling Organisational Behaviour and Social Agency

27-28 January 2014

This workshop on Modelling Organisational Behaviour and Social Agency” took place 27-28 January 2014 at Bournemouth University’s Business School. The event sought to examine the applications, structure, how-to, potentials, and philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of agent-based models (ABMs) as they apply to organisational behaviour and social agency. We had one day and a half of paper sessions, with social and networking activities. Participants came from seven countries, including the UK, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Lithuania, Canada, and Italy. Both days started with an invited speaker, with the intention of spice up and set a common ground for the discussion.

Download tentative programme from here 

Workshop III: The Emergence Of Consciousness

9 May 2013

Since 1964, the AISB has had an aim to foster the engagement of interdisciplinary subjects in the field of AI. Over the years the range of topics have grown substantially, but the question of consciousness has remained at the forefront of such interests. To that end, the 3rd AISB Workshop
 on The Emergence Of Consciousness took place at St Mary’s University in Strawberry Hill, London on 9 May 2013.
The basis for the workshop was to consider what is meant by the idea of consciousness, and to explore the idea of how, when, and why it emerged and emerges. A selection of papers from that conference has now been published in a Symposium Issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies, which is available via this link.

Workshop II: Distributed Thinking Symposium V

30-31 of January 2013

The symposium took place at Goldsmiths, University of London on the 30th-31st of January 2013, and it was the second instantiation of the AISB workshop series. The focus of the symposium was time-scales in systemic thinking—particularly when concerned with language dynamics, which is a theme that promises interesting findings for a variety of disciplines ranging from psychology, linguistics to artificial
intelligence (AI) and human-computer interaction (HCI).

Download programme from here 

Workshop I: Sensorimotor Theory Workshop

26 September 2012

A day of discussion on the Sensorimotor account of Perception, Consciousness  and Robotics, its development and contemporary state. The first in a series of AISB members’ workshops an event to promote the study of Embodied, Embedded, Enactive and Ecological cognitive science. Papers and collaborations emerging from that workshop has now been published in a book titled Contemporary Sensorimotor Theory (published by Springer).