This year is the University's 60th anniversary and as part of our celebrations we are partnering with Bath Digital Festival, doing a takeover of a whole day of the festival on 20th May 2026.
Today we are issuing a call to researchers from disciplines across the University to come along and get involved.
The Festival is themed around the idea of 'What if...' encouraging, challenging, and imagining the future of technology in the South West. We are looking for participants in a showcase event that can bring hands-on, interactive or engaging content for guests to exlore. Do you have research that could help guests think about 'what if', for example:
- Future Scenarios: What if AI was used deliberately in every department? What if the future isn't as grim as the headlines suggest?
- Technology & Society: What if large-scale, reliable quantum computers become a reality? What if we could use robots to create medicines? What if we could support childhood mental health through digital interventions?
- Data & Innovation: What if we could make sense of tech megatrends? What if accessibility powered digital innovation?
- Creativity & Education: What if you could get a degree in Esports?
Through the digital showcase, research groups can share the work they're doing that is positioned in the context of 'What if...' - it doesn't have to be inherently digital but will need a digital angle. This is a great chance to recruit participants for your research, to give your PhD students or Post Docs some experience in speaking to the public about their work, or to meet and mingle with sector leaders from our local area.
Ideally, showcased research will be engaging and give visitors a chance to get 'hands-on' in some way - for example, in past years our researchers studying rugby scrums brought their scrum machine, and visitors were able to try it out - seeing how their use of the machine then generated data the researchers can use.
If you would like your work to be considered for the showcase please email outlining what you'd be showing, how much space it could need, and which theme you think it would best fit. Contact us here.
Larger events
We also have a small amount of time in the day's schedule for larger, more focused events (maximum one hour each), and the Festival team is welcoming new submissions for these slots. These will ideally be interactive sessions that tackle a widely-engaging topic - for example a very well-received event in a previous year was Bath Institute for the Augmented Human's session titled 'Beyond boundaries: the Future of Human Augmentation' that featured an expert panel and interactive demonstrations that gave a comprehensive overview of current trends and future possibilities in the field.
If you feel you have a suggestion for one of these larger event slots please email with an outline - consider that as the goal of the festival is to be interactive and fun, you need to be clear on how you will make your session fit this ethos, and which external partners you might look to work with. Contact us here.
Fringe events
It is possible to run related fringe events around the Festival that can be promoted to festival goers, and benefit from association with the festival but will require full management by you or your team. This is a suitable option if you're planning to launch a new research centre, or need input on a specific project that wouldn't fit in the showcase or work as a core festival event. If you would like to explore this option, contact us with details and we'll aim to help you. Contact us here.
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