Research and Innovation Festival 2026
Loughborough University London is hosting a Research and Innovation Festival from April to July, the festival takes place through an open, experimental programme. Bringing together scholars, partners, practitioners, activists, artists, and communities, the festival explores how research is tackling urgent societal challenges in sport, climate change, geopolitics, justice, and ethics.
The festival operates as a network of interconnected events in partnership with collaborator organisations and institutions. At its heart is an unconference ethos: participants shape the agenda, conversations evolve in response to vibrant discussions, and ideas are tested collectively. The festival format intends to showcase ongoing work being led by the Loughborough University London academic community and places emphasis on dialogue, experimentation, and collaboration across disciplines and forms of expertise. By distributing activity across time, formats, and places, the festival aims to create a shared, inclusive space for Loughborough University’s research and innovation.
The festival encompasses a mix of seminars, panels, workshops, long-table conversations, and site-specific activities such as a river walk. Themes being explored include geopolitics and sport, infrastructure and sovereignty, digital justice, ethics, social change, and rights of nature, and more. The festival events are open to established researchers, early career scholars, students, community organisers, and policymakers.
Some sessions are invitation only or have numbers capped, please refer to the event schedule for specific details or contact the Event Lead(s) for more information.
Event schedule
| Event Title/Link | Date | Time | Location | Event Lead(s) | Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seminar on Advances in AI‑Based Speech Signal Processing: From Speech Restoration to Deepfake Detection | 14 May |
2pm - 3pm |
Loughborough University London | Xiyu Shi |
From fixing broken audio to catching deepfakes in a single “Hi” — join us for a sharp, accessible dive into next‑gen speech AI. This seminar explores how deep learning with multiscale multi‑head attention can reconstruct lost speech in real‑time communication by modelling long‑ and short‑term dependencies in codec‑processed signals. |
| FLUX Symposium 2026: Imagining Creative Futures | 14 May | 9.30am - 6pm | Loughborough University London |
Mikko Koria, Carmem Saito, Anais Carlton-Parada, Kavitha Ravikumar, Antonius van den Broek |
FLUX26 is a celebration of creativity and innovation from the Institute for Creative Futures. This event brings together keynote speakers, stimulating workshops, and an exhibition of student and staff research, to commemorate the 5th edition of FLUX and the 10th anniversary of the Loughborough University London School. |
| IIME Speaker Series: Dimitry Sharapov | 14 May | 3pm - 4.30pm | Loughborough University London | Melike Arslan | In this talk, Dimitry Sharapov examines the dynamics of multimarket competition in platform markets, with a focus on how firms respond to network-based competitive threats. |
| River Rights for the Channelsea | 27 May | 3pm - 7pm | Loughborough University London | Jamie Wilks | The Climate Ecological Transitions Hub at Loughborough University London (LUL) will host a River Rights Charter event with Surge Cooperative and River Rights Network, welcoming the rivers community for a lecture and hands on workshop to explore developing a River Rights Charter for the Channelsea Creek in East London. |
| Seminar on Cloud and AI Foundations: Cyber Resilience in Cloud-Supported Financial Services | 28 May | 2pm - 5pm |
Loughborough University London (LDN 0.14) |
Safak Dogan | Discover the foundations of cloud architecture, practical strategies for putting data to work on cloud at scale, and emerging approaches to cyber‑resilient design in cloud‑supported financial services. |
| Geoconnective Powers: Infrastructure of Communication, Life and Recursive Powers | 28th - 29th May | All day | Loughborough University London |
Burçe Çelik, |
A 1.5-day Geoconnective Powers workshop focused on developing new research on infrastructures of sovereignty and connectivity. |
Research Internationalisation and Innovation Coffee Morning |
11 June | Loughborough University London | Jessica Noske-Turner | “Research & Innovation” covers policy, enterprise, impact, partnerships, knowledge transfer and more. This flipped event offers one-to-one conversations on how to engage with these areas across the University. | |
| Planning for Action workshop | 22 June | 2pm - 5pm | Jubilee Centre, St. Albans, Hertfordshire | Ida Telalbasic | The workshop concludes with approximately 30 participants (farmers, food banks, community growers, nutritionists, academics, etc.) revisiting the final vision and co‑designing practical ways to bring it to life. |
| The Growing Geopoliticisation of Sport: A panel discussion | 23 June | 12.30pm - 1.45pm | Loughborough University London (LDN 001) | Tony Edwards | A panel discussion involving experts such as Jonathan Liew of the Guardian and Verity Posthlethwaite, Lecturer in Sport Diplomacy, SSEHS. Lunch will be served after the session. |
| New Global Players: The Story so Far and Next Steps | 23 June | 2.30pm - 4pm |
Loughborough University London (LDN 001) |
Tony Edwards | This session explores organisations from late-industrialising economies investing in global sport, the 'new global players'. Led by Tony Edwards with contributions from the Loughborough University London research team and others. It will be followed by drinks and a World Cup screening. |
| Communicative Futures: Concepts to Imagine With | 25 - 26 June | 9am - 5pm | Loughborough University London | Jessica Noske-Turner | Communicative Futures: Concepts to Imagine With, invites us to think about imagining both futures and concepts for expressing, making, dreaming and cocreating alternative futures. This event adopts an innovative ‘conceptual hackathon’ format, previously used as part of the production of the 2020 book, Communicating for Change: Concepts to Think With, published by Palgrave. |
| Collaborative Project Show | 25 June | 4pm - 7pm | Plexal, Here East | Amy Pyle | This year we will be celebrating 10 years of Loughborough University London's Collaborative Project and the significant contribution and impact partner organisations make to Loughborough University London. |
| Conversations on Digital Justice | 9 July |
Loughborough University London |
Jessica Noske-Turner | To mark the awarding of an Honorary Doctorate to Anita Gurumurthy, the Communication and Social Change R&I Hub and the AI & Humanity Hub are hosting a seminar on digital justice. Session 1 features Anita Gurumurthy and Guru Kasinathan, founders of IT for Change, alongside a panel of leading academics. A second session will bring together selected PhD researchers and academics for a research exchange, exploring new perspectives and connections in digital justice. |
Contact and booking details
- Booking required?
- Yes
- Booking information
- Please refer to listing details to identify who to send enquiries or booking requests to about individual events