Ecocentric AI Summer School
July 8-10 2026
The Neutral Lab, The Sheds, 65 Avon Street, BS2 0PZ
Automated technologies for nature appreciation and defence are important tools in the fight against climate change. The instrumentation of environments is happening in a range of settings, including air quality monitoring, ocean acoustics, reforestation and species ID. At the same time, the build out of high-tech infrastructure to support AI workloads, whether in the form of chip manufacturing plants or data centres, poses significant threats to conservation and ecosystem resilience. Natural resources and working farmlands are increasingly being lost to corporate enclosure, with energy consumption from these facilities raising costs for consumers and forcing prolonged reliance on fossil fuels. As Jennifer Gabrys writes, “Computational technologies are constitutive of environments, have environmental effects, and also in-form environmentalist practices.” As such, “the ways in which environments come to be articulated through sensing technologies have relevance for the types of environmental politics and citizenship that take hold along with these technologies.” As the UK’s AI University of the Year, Bristol is an ideal location to explore these important dimensions of Ecocentric AI.
Bringing together social science, the arts, humanities and law with computer science and engineering, this multidisciplinary summer school leverages the Environmental Humanities Summer School already running in July, to reflect the complexity and urgency of engaging in nature defence at a time of accelerating technology demand. The program features a series of opportunities to share methods and creative outputs that take advantage of AI’s benefits, seeding the potential for future projects and research collaborations. Industry and non-profit partners are invited to join and lead discussion on Day 2 to explore shared data challenges in using AI sustainably and for good. Elective talks and methods options each day offer students the chance to activate their interests and reflect critically on technology’s constraints under guidance from scholars and seasoned industry professionals. Please register separately for each event at the website here.
Agenda and tickets
Hear from a series of speakers from across the UK and Australia. Through presentations and panel discussions we’ll explore how automated technologies for nature appreciation and defence are important tools in the fight against climate change. Guests include Professor Jennifer Gabrys, University of Cambridge, visiting collaborators from The ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S) and Professor Tilo Burghart, University of Bristol.
In the evening we’ll head to Scott Logic (1 Redcliff St, Redcliffe, Bristol BS1 6NP, UK) for a special event in partnership with Green Tech South West with registration details to follow.
A day to connect with and hear from current and potential future BDFI partners working across local grassroots community development, film and television production, telecoms and environmental charities.
Come hear about some of the amazing work happening at Friends of the Earth, Green Web Foundation and Knowle West Media Centre.
Or join us for the partner focussed datathon to form small teams and develop live responses to partner needs in Ecocentric AI datasets. Spaces will be limited and we’d like to tailor teams to specific interests so please complete this form to register interest: Ecocentric AI Datathon Sign Up – Fill out form
Hosts Jeni Lee and Mardi Reardon-Smith invite participants to a daylong collaborative documentary making workshop exploring how technology is shaping human relationships with the natural world. Participants are introduced to simple documentary principles, including filming observational content and story structure. Working as one group, participants head into the field to shoot material around a shared prompt: where do care, technology and nature intersect?