NCAD Teaching & Learning Symposium 2025. This symposium will explore key challenges and innovations shaping higher education today. *Invited Guests Event*

*Invited Guests Event*

The 2025 NCAD Celebrate Teaching & Learning Symposium shines a light on the practices that enable students’ Bold & Curious Learning. Several staff members will generously share their practices with colleagues from across the College, inviting dialogue and creating conditions for collaboration.

2025 NCAD T&L Symposium: Programme Schedule
09:45 Tea & Coffee on arrival
10:00 Welcome and Introduction
Session 1: Inclusive Learning
10:10 Niamh McCann & Vivian Hansbury Towards a Decolonisation of the Curriculum
10:20 Dermot Flynn Inclusivity and Intersectionality: An Foclóir Aiteach. Illustrating the Queer Irish Dictionary
10:30 Aoife McInerney Design Declares toolkit. Embedding Sustainability into the Design Curriculum.
10:50 Questions
11:00 Comfort Break

Session 2: Collaboration
11:10 Sarah Ross Fine Art Professional Practices Module: Contemporary Art Angles. A collaboration between NCAD and TCD.
11:20 Katy Milligan Hands On: Encouraging Curiosity through Library Collections.
Over the 2024-2025 academic year, the Edward Murphy Library has facilitated sessions for various groups across NCAD’s undergraduate programmes that explore our rich collections through handling and browsing of library materials. This presentation focuses material engagement can open up the collections for students, contributing to the development of their information literacy skills.
11:30 Seán Kelleghan Reporting on the ELIA ETHO Technical Conference
11:40 Niall Cullen The Evolving Role of Fine Art Technicians'
A short presentation exploring the evolving role of fine art technicians, focusing on the value of technicians as practicing artists. Drawing on research from the ETHO conference in Riga and recent workshop innovations, it looks at how smarter workflows can support the demands of the role and enable ongoing professional development—as both an artist and a technician.
11:50 Kate Brangan More Like a Walking Tree
Experimental, evolving, and open-ended in its approach, the module set out to imagine hopeful narratives through regenerative and equitable systems and processes for now and the future.
12:00 Questions
12:10 Gareth Kennedy & Seoidin O'Sullivan Academic time meets the seasonality of the FIELD and its potentials. Review of the 8-10 courses from across the 4 schools that accepted the invitation, issued at last year's T&L symposium, which was to plot coursework and pedagogical experiment into the FIELD.
12:30 Questions
12:40 LUNCH

Session 3: Working at the edges
13:30 Sarah Durcan, Claire Nidecker, Cliona Harmey, Chloe Brennan "Frugal Media Research Group – Activities”
The Frugal Media Research Group is an initiative of artists and educators based in the Media and Sculpture Departments at NCAD; Chloe Brenan, Sarah Durcan, Cliona Harmey and Claire Nidecker. The group aims to bring together artists, students and researchers interested in working with lo-fi, feminist, frugal and tactile analogue/small scale media processes in a digital/post-digital era.
13:50 Anthony O'Connor & Marc Riley DrAiwing. Harmony between Ai and human engagement? Facing the fear and wondering how to proceed.
14:00 Elaine Hoey CLOAKING: Critical Resistance in the Age of AI
This research project centred on the planning and delivery of a public one-day event, The Cloaking Symposium and Workshop, co-organised by NCAD and The Digital Hub. It responded to the urgent ethical and creative challenges artists face due to the rapid rise of generative artificial intelligence. The project explored the concept of cloaking as a form of digital resistance, combining public talks with a student-led workshop on adversarial tools such as Glaze and Nightshade, which help artists protect their work from AI misuse.
14:20 Questions
14:30 Plenary Conversations with/about AI. Report on the HEA AI Summit held at UCC and an invitation to engage
15:00 Close