Kathryn (Katie) Conrad

I am a professor of English at the University of Kansas. My primary research focus is on technology and culture, particularly but not exclusively with regard to contemporary "artificial intelligence"; surveillance technologies; and technology in British, Irish, and Northern Irish literature and culture. I am particularly interested in the ethical questions that accompany the development, deployment, and use of generative AI tools.  I am the author of "The emergence of critical AI literacy" (with Tania Duarte and Ismael Kherroubi Garcia, for The AI and Ethics Handbook, preprint here); "Building Critical AI Literacy: An Approach to Generative AI" (with Sean Kamperman, Thresholds in Education), "Teaching critical AI literacies" (with Lauren M. E. Goodlad, NORRAG Policy Insights: AI and Digital Inequities); and "A Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights for Education" (Critical AI 2.1, preprint here). I have also published several other articles and book chapters on technology and culture (see below), and co-edited Science, Technology, and Irish Modernism with Cóilín Parsons and Julie McCormick Weng (Syracuse, 2019).  I am co-director (with Sean Kamperman) of the AI & Digital Literacy project, in partnership with the National Humanities Center. I serve as an Associate Editor for AI & Ethics (Springer Nature) and Critical AI (Duke), and I served on the founding advisory board for Harvard’s AI Pedagogy Project. I have spoken on topics including critical AI literacy, AI & writing, AI ethics, and AI risk & compliance at a number of universities, secondary schools, and organizations including Georgetown University, the University of Kansas, Rutgers University, and University of Nebraska - Lincoln as well as on several webinars, panels, and podcasts. I have been interviewed on AI by media outlets including the The New York Times and USA Today. In June 2024, I served on an experts' panel advising the UN Special Rapporteur for Education on human rights, AI and education. I am currently a moderator for the technocritical educator collective The Library of Babel Group. My artwork as well as my artistic collaborations with  illustrator Rose Willis have appeared in Better Images of AI, including our collaboration "Isolation," a winning entry in the 2025 ESRC Centre for Digital Futures at Work competition for digital transformations at work.