24.07.2026

Scarborough Retreat 2026

One of the great joys of a CDT comes from getting the community together, which is exactly what we did this summer when we travelled to Scarborough for our annual retreat. It’s easy to forget in the day to day work what rich diversity we have here in the SAINTS programme. Multi-disciplinary work doesn’t happen by accident and these events allow us time to discuss broader topics and gain insights from our colleagues across (and beyond) the university.

We kicked off our time away with a set of activities where everyone chose a topic which interested them. For some it was a discussion about the Epistemic safety and deception in AI and games, others discussed what it means to get an international agreement on the future of AI, whilst another group used hands-on skills to introduce safeguards into a self-driving vehicle. It was wonderful to see groups working together irrespective of their home discipline or level of experience.

Later in the day we had a visiting speaker, Leslye Dias Duran, discussing her work on children’s agency and generative AI which led to a number of interesting questions before we headed out for a lovely meal in town where the questions continued well into the evening. On returning to the hotel we set up an impromptu Karaoke session for both our PhD candidates and Academics, I’m not sure who had more fun.

Throughout the year we have asked our researchers to share their work with us through presentations on many occasions. Feedback earlier in the year let us know however that they wanted to know more about the research of the SAINTS Co-Investigators. So on the second day, 9 of us gave lighting talks about our research interests. Whilst this was intended as a way for the PGRs to hear more about our work it also helped us as academics to see the breadth of research going on across the university and the interdisciplinary differences in research.

Overall our retreat felt like both an academically enriching experience and a suitable celebration of the hard work that’s been going on in SAINTS this year. I look forward to the next one when we’ll be joined by our 3rd and largest cohort to date.