UCL 2025 Creative Fellowships open - Encounters: Knowledge Futures in the Age of AI
17 January 2025
The Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) at UCL’s Bloomsbury campus, together with the School for the Creative and Cultural Industries (SCCI) at UCL East, is seeking to appoint four Quirk Creative Fellows to work with us in 2025.

The Encounters programme of Fellowships, which has been running since 2019, offers creative practitioners the opportunity to explore new directions in their own practice in partnership with UCL academics. This year - besides an open-ended exploration of the relationship between creative practice and research - these grants also invite practitioners to work with UCL academics on the theme of Knowledge Futures in the Age of AI.
The Creative Fellowships award
The Encounters programme aims to unpack creativity and the creative method, and to explore how creative practice operates as a form of knowing, exploring or discovering as well as doing, seeking to recognise the value of creative practice as knowledge creation and knowledge disruption. For our Fellowships, we are looking for creative practitioners who are excited about exploring, through their own creative practice, one or more of the following questions:
- What is the value of creative practices as forms of knowing, exploring or discovering, and how do these forms relate to more conventional modes of research?
- How might creative or artistic practices be used to transform or amplify more conventional modes of research in the humanities or social sciences?
- How can academic research learn to speak more clearly to the needs of creative practitioners and to the creative and cultural industries?
- How can creative practice map the future? How can it help map the future of research both at UCL and more widely?
The programme is broadly focused on the fields of performance, creative writing, visual arts or media.
Four Fellowships are available for 2025, running from March to the end of the UCL financial year on 31 July 2025. The exact dates will be agreed at appointment stage. This year we are offering grants of £5,000 each.
One of the Fellowships will be linked to Music Futures, which is a UCL-wide cross-disciplinary network exploring the potential of music as a research method. Music Futures is co-ordinated jointly by the IAS and the European Institute, with support from UCL Grand Challenges: please see our website: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of-advanced-studies/music-futures.
One of the Fellowships will be linked to Art Futures, which brings together UCL academics and the creative industries to create new partnerships, business opportunities, and research. Co-founded by the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL Innovation & Enterprise and UCL Faculty of Laws, it creates a unique space for interdisciplinary research, production and design. Please see: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/art-futures/.
The other two Fellowships will be open to applicants wishing to work either with members of ARIEL or with members of other UCL research centres or networks based at the IAS or at SCCI. For information on the range of possibilities, see: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of-advanced-studies/research/research-centres-and-networks and https://www.ucl.ac.uk/creative-cultural-industries/.
All four of the appointed Fellows will be asked to respond creatively to the theme of Knowledge Futures in the Age of AI and then to plan and deliver at least two events aimed at staff or students at UCL, and, as appropriate, a wider public. These could be seminars, creative workshops, performance events or any other medium that allows people to collaborate in exploring creativity. How you respond to the ideas you encounter at UCL is up to you; we will not expect you to follow any prescribed format; we are keen for you to experiment, as long as some of our community of researchers and students can be involved in the process. Fellows will also be expected to help imagine future directions for ARIEL.
What we are looking for
We are looking for creative practitioners from any field who are interested in working within a university context for a period of time, to explore with researchers and students at UCL their shared interests in the value of the ‘creative humanities’.
We are particularly interested in working with practitioners who may not have any prior experience of working with a university, and are committed to providing support to help the Fellow to navigate our university ‘walls’ and engage meaningfully with our communities.
Testimonials
I think the openness and willingness to get involved is key; taking part in IAS seminars was the thing that I found most daunting, but it was the biggest surprise to me, how beneficial that was. The close scrutiny and attention of fellow researchers to one's work, was/is challenging at first but ultimately a really special experience. Nicola Baldwin, Playwright and UCL Creative Fellow 2019-20
As someone who usually operates adjacent to or on the fringes of academia, the opportunity work closely with faculty for a sustained period of time has extended the parameters of my practice in an exciting way. What has been of particular benefit has been collaborative encounters with academics who don't just have a different way of working, but a different way of thinking, encouraging me to approach problems from different conceptual starting points, rather than just different formats or contexts. Simon Farid, Creative Fellow and Visiting Research Fellow 2022-23
Timeframe
Completed applications should be submitted by midnight on Sunday 16 February 2025. Fellowships would be expected to start in March/April 2025.
To apply
Please complete and submit an Expression of Interest Form along with your CV to the IAS Administrator and Executive Assistant to the Director by midnight on Sunday 16 February: Catherine Stokes: c.stokes@ucl.ac.uk. In addition, you may also send a link to your digital portfolio/website.
Find out more about UCL Creative Fellowships:
- UCL Creative Fellowships 2025 – Programme Overview
- Expression of Interest Form
- Launch of UCL Creative Fellowships – July 2019
- Recording of first draft reading of Wasteland, a play by former Creative Fellow Nicola Baldwin
- Read about former Creative Fellow Dr Mariah Whelan’s project