Dr Brian Ballsun-Stanton

Dr Brian Ballsun-Stanton is a Senior Lecturer at Macquarie University. He leads the Faculty of Arts’ work on AI in research and teaching. He studies how people think about and use AI, how people can build effective judgement, and where to choose to increase or decrease friction. He led the creation of Macquarie’s Guidance note on Generative AI in Research, documentation checklists, and supported ethics and research data management’s thinking around AI. His work on AI and research integrity received the 2025 Vice-Chancellor’s Excellence in Research Integrity Award. He has delivered more than 40 AI workshops in Australia, Europe, and the United States, to around 1,500 researchers and staff. He co-created the Coursera course Generative AI for Educators, which won a 2026 Outstanding Course award from the Global MOOC and Online Education Alliance. He explores what it means to use AI well in daily life, teaching, and research.

His current research program, the AI-Locus of Control, explores people’s orientation to AI: is it a tool they control or an external agent? He explores how to use thinking about thinking to improve how we think about working with AI. This question reaches back to his PhD in the Philosophy of Data. There he found that people who agree they are talking about “data” often mean different things by that term. He brings that understanding to his work with other researchers, designing methods around their questions and what their field accepts as evidence. These collaborations span field research and the study of online communication. He has designed offline mobile field recording systems for archaeologists and ecologists. The systems also support oral history research and helicopter geosampling in the outback. With colleagues, he has used digital humanities methods to analyse social-media posts at scale and support policymakers in New South Wales. This research examined how far-right and conspiratorial narratives circulated and changed before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Brian co-chairs a Research Data Alliance group writing international standards for how researchers document their use of generative AI. Outside the university he works with people who have to make decisions about AI in their own settings. These include financial regulators in the United Kingdom and a medical college’s research-ethics committee, the telecoms industry, and the fashion world.

In teaching, he gives students practice in making decisions and explaining them. With a colleague, he replaced written law case problems with interviews in which students act as lawyers understanding the problems of an AI client simulation. He designed and built the Prompt Grimoire Annotation Tool, which students use to annotate texts and reflect on their reading and AI use. More than 2,000 students across nine units have used it. Through Generative AI for Educators he and his co-creator have helped educators develop the knowledge and skills to evaluate AI and bring it into their own teaching.

Publications

Papers

Johnston, V. H., Ballsun-Stanton, B., Jensen, H. S., Kjeldsen, C. K., & Thøgersen, J. (2026, April 13). Exploring the Archived Web through AI-Assisted Document Discovery. Journal of Digital History. https://journalofdigitalhistory.org/en/notebook-viewer/JTJGcHJveHktZ2l0aHVidXNlcmNvbnRlbnQlMkZXRUItQ0hJTEQlMkZleHBsb3JpbmctdGhlLWFyY2hpdmVkLXdlYi10aHJvdWdoLWFpLWFzc2lzdGVkLWRvY3VtZW50LWRpc2NvdmVyeSUyRm1haW4lMkZhcnRpY2xlLmlweW5i/?v=3
Smith, S. M., Tate, M., Freeman, K., Walsh, A., Ballsun-Stanton, B., & Lane, M. (2026, January 2). A university framework for the responsible use of generative AI in research. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 48(1), 17–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360080X.2025.2509187
Waldek, L., Ballsun-Stanton, B., Iqbal, M., Kernot, D., & Smith, D. (2025, December 2). Ethical conundrums: Hacked data in the study of far-right violent extremism. New Media & Society, 14614448251399640. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448251399640
Kudina, O., Ballsun-Stanton, B., & Alfano, M. (2025, February 1). The use of large language models as scaffolds for proleptic reasoning. Asian Journal of Philosophy, 4(1), 24. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44204-025-00247-1
Hermankova, P., Ballsun-Stanton, B., & Laurence, R. (2024, November 20). FAIR turn in epigraphy: Conference on Computational Humanities Research (5th : 2024). CHR 2024: Computational Humanities Research 2024, 649–661. https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3834/
Ballsun-Stanton, B., & Hipólito, I. (2024, July 1). Is the “Calculator for Words” analogy useful for communicating about LLMs? https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.12602858
Sobotkova, A., Ross, S. A., Nassif-Haynes, C., & Ballsun-Stanton, B. (2023, June 1). Creating large, high-quality geospatial datasets from historical maps using novice volunteers. Applied Geography, 155, 102967. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2023.102967
Hutchinson, J., Amarasingam, A., Scrivens, R., & Ballsun-Stanton, B. (2023, April 3). Mobilizing extremism online: comparing Australian and Canadian right-wing extremist groups on Facebook. Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, 15(2), 215–245. https://doi.org/10.1080/19434472.2021.1903064
Ross, S., Ballsun-Stanton, B., Cassidy, S., Crook, P., Klump, J., & Sobotkova, A. (2022, November 10). FAIRer Data through Digital Recording: The FAIMS Mobile Experience. Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology, 5(1), 271. https://doi.org/10.5334/jcaa.96
Svetanant, C., Ballsun-Stanton, B., & Rutherford, A. T. (2022, April). Emotional engagement in Thai and Japanese insurance advertising: corpus-based keyword analysis. Corpora, 17(1), 69–96. https://doi.org/10.3366/cor.2022.0235
Ballsun-Stanton, B. (2022). Students, Participatory Design, and Serious Games in a Response to: “No Algorithmization without Representation: Pilot Study on Regulatory Experiments in an Exploratory Sandbox.” Digital Society, 1(3), 23. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44206-022-00024-0
Sobotkova, A., Ross, S. A., Hermankova, P., Lupack, S., Nassif-Haynes, C., Ballsun-Stanton, B., & Kasimi, P. (2021, November 17). Deploying an Offline, Multi-User, Mobile System for Digital Recording in the Perachora Peninsula, Greece. Journal of Field Archaeology, 46(8), 571–594. https://doi.org/10.1080/00934690.2021.1969837
VanValkenburgh, P., Silva, L. O. G., Repetti-Ludlow, C., Gardner, J., Crook, J., & Ballsun-Stanton, B. (2018, November). Mobilization as Mediation: Implementing a Tablet-Based Recording System for Ceramic Classification. Advances in Archaeological Practice, 6(4), 342–356. https://doi.org/10.1017/aap.2018.12
Ballsun-Stanton, B., Ross, S. A., Sobotkova, A., & Crook, P. (2018, January 1). FAIMS Mobile: Flexible, open-source software for field research. SoftwareX, 7, 47–52. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.softx.2017.12.006
Ross, S., Sobotkova, A., Ballsun-Stanton, B., & Crook, P. (2013, December 1). Creating eresearch Tools For Archaeologists: The Federated Archaeological Information Management Systems Project. Australian Archaeology, 77(1), 107–119. https://doi.org/10.1080/03122417.2013.11681983

Chapters

Ross, S. A., & Ballsun-Stanton, B. (2022). Introducing Preregistration of Research Design to Archaeology. In E. Watrall & L. Goldstein (Eds.), Digital Heritage and Archaeology in Practice: Data, Ethics, and Professionalism (pp. 15–35). University Press of Florida. https://doi.org/10.5744/florida/9780813069302.003.0002
Sobotkova, A., Ross, S. A., Ballsun-Stanton, B., Fairbairn, A., Thompson, J., & VanValkenburgh, P. (2016, October 15). Measure Twice, Cut Once: Cooperative Deployment of a Generalized, Archaeology-Specific Field Data Collection System. In Mobilizing the Past for a Digital Future: The Potential of Digital Archaeology (1st ed.). The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota. https://minds.wisconsin.edu/handle/1793/89895
Ross, S., Ballsun-Stanton, B., Sobotkova, A., & Crook, P. (2015, November 27). Building the Bazaar: Enhancing Archaeological Field Recording Through an Open Source Approach. In A. T. Wilson & B. Edwards (Eds.), Open Source Archaeology (pp. 111–129). De Gruyter Open Poland. https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110440171-009/html?srsltid=AfmBOoobOtcTDwZ7ofFHah-2912YLXfUz3LGotJfraDe3yS4Pfx6l67e

Conference papers

Ballsun-Stanton, B., & Khalid, M. (2025, June 16). The Emperor’s New Clothes: A Manifesto for Universities in an AI-Haunted World. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.15671962
Sobotkova, A., Ballsun-Stanton, B., Ross, S., & Crook, P. (2013). Arbitrary Offline Data Capture on All of Your Androids: The FAIMS Mobile Platform. Across Space and Time. Computer Applications and Archaeology. https://www-taylorfrancis-com.simsrad.net.ocs.mq.edu.au/chapters/oa-edit/10.5117/9789089647153-9/arbitrary-offline-data-capture-androids-faims-mobile-platform-adela-sobotkova-brian-ballsun-stanton-shawn-ross-penny-crook
Carruthers, K., & Ballsun-Stanton, B. (2010, November). #c3t an agreeable swarm: Twitter, the democratization of media & non-localized proximity. 5th International Conference on Computer Sciences and Convergence Information Technology, 166–169. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCIT.2010.5711050
Ballsun-Stanton, B., & Carruthers, K. (2010, November). #c3t the command & control of Twitter: On a socially constructed Twitter & applications of the Philosophy of Data. 5th International Conference on Computer Sciences and Convergence Information Technology, 161–165. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCIT.2010.5711049
Ballsun-Stanton, B. (2010, November). Asking about data: Experimental philosophy of Information Technology. 5th International Conference on Computer Sciences and Convergence Information Technology, 119–124. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCIT.2010.5711041
Ballsun-Stanton, B., & Bunker, D. (2009, July 31). Philosophy of Data (PoD) and its Importance to the Discipline of Information Systems. AMCIS 2009 Proceedings. Americas Conference on Information Systems. https://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2009/435

Reports

Droogan, J., Waldek, L., Ballsun-Stanton, B., & Hutchinson, J. (2022, September 7). Mapping a Social Media Ecosystem: Outlinking on Gab & Twitter Amongst the Australian Far-right Milieu. RESOLVE Network. https://doi.org/10.37805/remve2022.6
Hutchinson, J., Droogan, J., Waldek, L., & Ballsun-Stanton, B. (2022, August 25). Violent Extremist & REMVE Online Ecosystems: Ecological Characteristics for Future Research & Conceptualization. RESOLVE Network. https://doi.org/10.37805/remve2022.5
Ebbott, E., Saletta, M., Stearne, R., Stjellja, M., Dowse, A., Wilk, V., Legrand, T., de Zwart, M., Stephens, D., Ashenden, D., Webb, M., Leckie, C., Ahmad, A., Perfors, A., de Rozario, R., van Gelder, T., Sciacca, L., Kashima, Y., Ruppanner, L., … Wong, R. (2021, August). Understanding Mass Influence:: Three case studies of contemporary mass influence activities. University of New South Wales.
Ballsun-Stanton, B., Waldek, L., Droogan, J., Smith, D., Iqbal, M., & Peucker, M. (2020, October 9). Mapping Networks and Narratives of Online Right-Wing Extremists in New South Wales. Macquarie University. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4071472

Preprints and registered reports

Ballsun-Stanton, B. (2026, October 19). “Ask Me One Critical, Pointed, and Specific Question at a Time”: Building Research Skills With Large Language Models. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23522885
Ross, S., & Ballsun-Stanton, B. (2026, July 30). Paper B: Reliability in research with large language models is a property of the human–AI system. OSF. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/M376W
Wang, H.-C., Lai, J., Ballsun-Stanton, B., Van Bergen, P., Waked, L., Green, G., Colenbrander, D., Jones, T., & Robinson-Jones, C. (2026, July 17). AI-enabled Academic Vocabulary Learning for Multilingual Children. EdArXiv. https://doi.org/10.35542/osf.io/p8mab_v2
Ballsun-Stanton, B., Torrington, J., & Meissner, E. (2026, July 13). Registered Report: A Longitudinal Study of AI-Locus of Control in Higher Education. OSF. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/CS8BH
Torrington, J., Ballsun-Stanton, B., & Lai, J. W. M. (2025, July 28). Teaching Students How to Effectively Interact with LLMs at University: Insights on the Longitudinal Development of AI-Locus of Control. EdArXiv. https://doi.org/10.35542/osf.io/6mke5_v3
Ballsun-Stanton, B., & Torrington, J. (2025, June 3). Teaching the Unknown: A Pedagogical Framework for Teaching With and About AI. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.15583013
Head, A., & Ballsun-Stanton, B. (2024, April 4). Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Undergraduate Assessment. Macquarie University. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.10916388

Guidance

Ballsun-Stanton, B., & Smith, S. (2025, April 30). Generative AI in Research: Disclosure & Documentation Guidance / Checklist. Macquarie University. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.15307492
Ballsun-Stanton, B., Smith, S. M., & White, K. (with Anson, D., Connor, M., Cornish, J., D’Arcens, L., Kim, J., Singh, A., & Todd, V.). (2023, October 22). Guidance Note: Using Generative Artificial Intelligence in Research. Macquarie University. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.10851623

Roles and service

Leads the Faculty of Arts' work on AI in research and teaching.
Co-chairs the Research Data Alliance interest group on documenting generative AI in research outputs.
Board and program committee member of the International Association for Computing and Philosophy.
Served on Macquarie University's Guidance Note working group.
Served on Macquarie University's 2024 AI Advisory Taskforce Education working group.
Served on Macquarie University's 2024 AI Working Group.

Grants

2026. Human-Centered AI for Historical Document Analysis. Aarhus Universitets Forskningsfond. Chief Investigator, led by A/Prof Adela Sobotkova.
2026. Expanding the onwork.edu.au Repository. Macquarie University Ethics & Agency Research Centre. Chief Investigator, led by Prof Jean-Philippe Deranty.
2025–2026. The Prompt Grimoire: Scaffolding Formative AI-Enabled Assessment. Macquarie University. Co-Lead.
2025–2026. AI-Powered Literacy Support for Struggling Learners. The Trustee for James N Kirby Foundation. Chief Investigator, led by Dr Hua-Chen Wang.
2025. Developing a Tailored Programme for Teaching and Research in History Using AI. Aarhus Universitets Forskningsfond. Visiting Researcher, led by A/Prof Adela Sobotkova.
2024. Short-term Visiting Fellow: AI Workshop Series. University of Tasmania. Visiting Fellow.
2024. Novel Open Journal Infrastructure: Exploring CI/CD pipelines’ applicability to a new journal paradigm. Yale University. Lead Chief Investigator.
2021–2023. Pilot Soil Monitoring and Incentives Program. CSIRO Agriculture and Food. Chief Investigator, led by Prof Shawn Ross.
2021–2022. Observe Reflect Improve: a tool to enrich Children’s Learning (ORICL). Macquarie University. Chief Investigator, led by Prof Linda Harrison.
2021–2022. Racially and ethnically motivated violent extremist (REMVE) Online Research. United States Institute for Peace. Chief Investigator, led by Dr Julian Droogan.
2021. An examination of Australian Violent Extremism in the context of the Covid-19 Pandemic. Department of Communities and Justice, NSW – Partner Funded Research. Chief Investigator, led by Ms Lise Waldek.
2021. DSP Multi-Party Collaborative Project Agreement in relation to the undertaking of three case studies of Mass Influence Organisations. Department of Defence, Commonwealth of Australia. Chief Investigator, led by Prof Ben Schreer.
2020–2023. FAIMS 3.0 Electronic Field Notebooks: A platform for field research supporting digital data capture and management in diverse situations. National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy / ARDC. Chief Investigator, led by Prof Shawn Ross.
2020–2021. Mapping networks and narratives of far-right social movements in New South Wales. Department of Communities and Justice – Partner Funded Research. Chief Investigator, led by Dr Julian Droogan.
2018–2023. Indigenous foodways in colonial Cape York Peninsula. Australian Research Council Linkage Project. Partner Investigator, led by A/Prof Mick Morrison.
2016–2018. Field Acquired Information Management Systems (FAIMS) project. New South Wales Government Research Attraction & Acceleration Program. Technical Director, led by A/Prof Shawn Ross.
2015. User support for Virtual Laboratories and eResearch Tools. National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources, eResearch Tools program. Chief Investigator.
2014–2015. Federated archaeological information management systems project: transforming archaeological research through digital technologies. Australian Research Council Linkage, Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities Grant. Technical Director, led by A/Prof Shawn Ross.
2012–2013. Federated Archaeological Information Management Systems. National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources, eResearch Tools program. Data Architect, led by A/Prof Shawn Ross.

Awards

2026. Outstanding Course award, Global MOOC and Online Education Alliance. Awarded to Dr Jodie Torrington, Dr Brian Ballsun-Stanton and Mr Luke Waked.
2025. Vice-Chancellor's Excellence in Research Integrity Award (Winner).
2025. Vice-Chancellor's Innovation in Education Award (Highly Commended). Awarded to B. Ballsun-Stanton, J. Torrington, S. Daft, A. Head, M. Khalid, R. Laurence, H.-C. Wang and T. Revink.
2024. Faculty of Arts Educational Leadership Award.
2018. Challenge.gov DataApp prize, US Bureau of Reclamation and US Geological Survey. Awarded to B. Ballsun-Stanton, S. Ross and S. Cassidy.

Education

2012. PhD in Philosophy, UNSW. Thesis: Asking about data: exploring different realities of data via the social data flow network methodology. Recipient of the UNSW University International Postgraduate Award.
2007. MS in Information Technology, Rochester Institute of Technology. Department Graduate Assistantship in Databases.
2005. BS in Information Technology, Rochester Institute of Technology.