Sara Hamandi, a second-year engineering undergraduate student, along with Dr Rehan Shah, and a cross-institutional team of multi-disciplinary colleagues comprising Prof Anne Preston (Professor of Interdisciplinary Education, UCL) and Mr Craig Martin (Subject Liaison Librarian, UCL) presented their collaborative scholarship research project "SEED-AI: Designing Social Enterprise Education through AI–Enabled Student–Community Partnerships" at the UCL Education Conference held at the Institute of Education on Wed 15 April 2026.

The project, funded by a RAISE (Researching, Advancing and Inspiring Student Engagement) Network Research Grant focuses on the co-design of a new, shared social entrepreneurship framework featuring Queen Mary and UCL students working together with E17 Films, a local East London community organisation  to develop socially driven entrepreneurial ideas using ethical and creative applications of Generative AI. The project team comprises two student co-researchers, a community partner, and two academic staff members and has employed a participatory design methodology to collaboratively design the structure, assessment, and GenAI learning activities for the framework. 

The work builds on existing student–community engagement work at Queen Mary and UCL East and responds to student interest in learning that is locally relevant, socially impactful, and future-focused. By co-creating the curriculum with students and communities, the aim is to model a more democratic and socially responsible approach to educational design. The final module framework will provide a transferable model that other institutions and academic staff can adopt to support student partnership, ethical GenAI use, and community-engaged curriculum development. The subsequent outputs will also be showcased at the QMUL Festival of Education in June 2026, followed by the flagship RAISE conference at Northumbria University in September 2026.