News Story

Open University Researchers awarded £450,000 for “Unlearning AI”

Wednesday 1 Apr 2026

KMi is proud to announce that Dr. Tracie Farrell and co-investigator Dr. R. Justin Hunt have been awarded funding of £450,000 to continue Dr. Farrell’s UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship on the impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) and social justice. The funding will support 3 years of research and public engagement activities.

The original fellowship programme, Shifting Power, addressed the current state of artificial intelligence research and deployment and the ways in which this transformative technology shifts power dynamics locally and globally. Alongside her interdisciplinary team, Dr. Farrell’s research has shown how certain ideas and assumptions in and about AI have become hegemonic and are creating barriers for innovation in AI research.

For the renewal, Dr. Farrell will be working with artist and cultural critic R. Justin Hunt as a co-investigator to explore the ways in we can unlearn our current understandings of AI that cannot or will not lead to justice. Adapting methods from practice-based research in the arts, performance ethnography, and reflexive pedagogies, Dr. Farrell and Dr. Hunt will identify new entry points for thinking about the societal impacts of AI, ethical challenges and responsibilities, drawing from queer theory and practice. This includes rethinking the value of scale, the necessity of quantification, and understanding the distribution of benefits alongside the distribution of harms.

The fellowship team is looking forward to the new challenges this renewal period will bring, with wider interdisciplinary participation and new partnerships across the UK.