Mairéad Pratschke is an independent researcher, author and advisor working at the intersection of AI strategy, ethical governance, and human-centred design. With over 25 years of experience in digital education and learning innovation, she focuses on learning systems design that prioritises pedagogical alignment and human development. She comes to this work from a multidisciplinary background spanning international politics and policy, modern history, languages, film and media.

She is the author of Generative AI and Education: Digital Pedagogies, Teaching Innovation and Learning Design (Springer, 2024); New Horizons for Higher Education: Teaching and Learning with Generative AI (National Digital Education Leadership Network, 2025); ‘From Consumers to Designers: Strategic Pathways for European Higher Education in the AI Age’ (Journal of Digital Politics, 2025); and a chapter in the Foundational Frameworks section of the new Handbook of Generative AI in Education: Integrating Research into Practice (Springer, 2026), entitled ‘From AI Tools to AI Systems: Designing Pedagogical Systems for Learning’.

In Generative AI and Education she introduced the term ‘the new hybrid’ to describe a future of human-AI collaboration rather than replacement, and she is the originator of Generativism as the design approach, and of the TPAIK, Context and Agentic Community of Inquiry (ACoI) frameworks for designing learning in and for that future.

Mairéad is a Visiting Professor at the LSE Data Science Institute and serves on the External Advisory Board of the US National Science Foundation-funded AI Institute for Adult Learning & Online Education (AI-ALOE) at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). She also sits on the Expert Review Panel for the Workforce Development Applied Research Fund of Singapore’s Skills & Workforce Development Agency (formerly SkillsFuture Singapore), which is run in collaboration with Singapore’s Ministry of Education and Ministry of Manpower.

Mairéad is a regular keynote speaker internationally on AI and education. She works with educational institutions, national government agencies, policy bodies and learning organisations on how to prepare for the AI-driven future, helping them turn research into decisions they can trust. The best way to reach her is via the Contact form.