MIX 2025 Call for Presentations

Wednesday 2 July 2025 at Bath Spa University’s Locksbrook Campus   

 Now in its eighth year, Bath Spa University’s MIX has established itself as an innovative forum for the discussion and exploration of writing and technology, bringing together researchers, writers, technologists and practitioners from around the world to make, think and talk. After our unique collaboration with the British Library in 2023, MIX 2025 will be hosted in the beautiful city of Bath at Bath Spa University’s Locksbrook Campus. 

As part of our programme, New York Times bestselling writer and publisher Michael Bhaskar, currently working for Microsoft AI and co-author of the book The Coming Wave: AI, Power and the 21st Century’s Greatest Dilemma, will appear in conversation. 

MIX is situated within Bath Spa University’s world-class Creative Writing department within the School of Writing, Publishing and Humanities, as well as the Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries, which also co-hosts the online magazine of writing and technology, The Writing Platform. MIX 2025 is part of the MyWorld programme, which explores the future of creative technology innovation.  

Themes for this year’s discussions include: 

Issues of trust and truth in digital writing  

The use of generative AI tools by authors, poets, and screenwriters 

Debates around AI and ethics for creative practitioners 

Emerging immersive storytelling practices  

In a world where we are facing the challenges of disinformation, replication, and increasingly limited or siloed perspectives, it can feel that there is no place for truth, and that originality in human creativity has been devalued. While many practitioners in the fields of electronic literature and digital art have been experimenting with generative AI tools for decades now, many writers are disputing what they see as the vast infringement of copyright made by the technology corporations behind many LLMs (Large Language Models) and datasets. The writers’ strike in the USA made plain many of the concerns of the creative industries when it comes to the downgrading of their work through automation.  

In addition, the environmental cost of the energy required to generate the computational power behind these tools is often ignored. And while the biases and falsehoods demonstrated by LLMs are well known, there is much more to discuss when it comes to considering the ethics of our engagement with these technologies. And yet, for many creators, AI tools boost productivity, increase resilience, and positively challenge our notions of authorship and authenticity.  

Through our work on the UKRI-funded research project, MyWorld, we have hosted a series of webinars on Writing and Technology, with a focus on the debates and issues with regards to LLMs and AI tools. The 2025 MIX one-day symposium will build on and develop these fascinating and crucial conversations, enabling us to look at the promise of AI tools and the way they can enhance and support creativity, as well as honing our critical thinking in this rapidly developing field.  

MIX 2025 will investigate the intersection between these themes and the challenges and opportunities for interactive and locative works, poetry film, screenwriting, writing for games as well as digital preservation, archiving, enhanced curation, and storytelling with AI. We also welcome papers or presentations on the innovative use of AI tools in creative writing pedagogy. 

Interested in joining us?  

We are looking for proposals for either 15-minute papers or presentations or 5-minute lightning talks from technologists, artists, writers, and poets as well as academic researchers and independent scholars. We are particularly interested in the work and views of creators, audiences and communities currently underrepresented across writing and technology.  

To propose your paper or presentation for MIX 2025, please submit a 300-word summary and a 150 biography of yourself and any co-presenters via our website.  

 This will be a boutique version of MIX, with ticket numbers limited to 70.   

 £45 full price / £25 students/concessions.  

Deadline for submissions of proposals: 5pm Monday 10 February 2025  

Notification of acceptance: Friday 28 February 2025   

Email enquiries: mix@bathspa.ac.uk  

 www.mixconference.org