AI and Us - Community Engagement in a Changing Technological Landscape

21 May 2026

This timely event brought together academics and community groups to consider the impact of generative AI on community engaged work.

Participants set out to address the following questions: 

Generative Artificial Intelligence is rapidly changing work and education, but will it change the way we engage in and with community?

Community engaged work is based on being there with people, in embodied experiential ways, could AI disrupt, enhance or alter this?

Through world café discussions, UCC staff and community partners explored the challenges and opportunities offered by AI for communities.

The event opened with a performance by Eva McMullan and choir, followed by a showcase of community engaged work with contributions from Sarah Robinson, Jeanette Fitzsimons, Marica Cassarino, among others.

This well-attended event was jointly organised by the Community Engagement Committee in CACSSS and the ISS21 Ageing Research Cluster.

_{The President of UCC, Professor John O’Halloran, opens the event.}