Talk at the ALife Education Virtual Workshop (AEDU) — May 2026
I will be giving a talk at the ALife Education (AEDU) Virtual Workshop in May 2026.
Title: Artificial Life Is Everywhere — So Why Is It So Hard to Teach?
Our attempt to answer the questions of “why” and “how” to teach artificial life must begin with a more epistemic question: what, exactly, is this “artificial life” that we’re teaching? Despite (now) decades of progress, “artificial life” remains a field that resists stable definition. It is at once a domain, a methodology, and a way of thinking. Perhaps more importantly, it operates as a sandbox for other disciplines: a space where ideas from biology, computer science, physics, philosophy, cognitive science, social sciences, and beyond find a common home, where they can be reworked, recombined, and made to interact in peculiar ways.
Yet this conceptual richness comes at a cost: “artificial life”, as its own “thing”, is most visible from within its own community, and far less legible to those outside it. This lack of shared definition, external visibility, and underlying normative assumptions has a clear impact on how we think about ALife pedagogy. Scientists in neighbouring disciplines may engage with traditional and fundamental artificial life ideas, without ever encountering the field itself. The challenge, therefore, is not just in relation to teaching, but entry points — i.e. how “artificial life” is presented, framed, and made discoverable to those who are not already looking for it.
In this short talk, I will share some of my thoughts as well as synthesise insights from the Societal Outreach Initiatives for Artificial Life workshop at ALIFE 2025, using them to highlight a set of underlying tensions: between artificial life as a discipline and as an approach; between internal coherence and external discoverability; and between balancing its interdisciplinary ambition and the practicalities of pedagogy. I argue that before we can meaningfully address how to teach artificial life, we must first confront the possibility that we do not yet agree on what it is, or who it is for.