Dr Brian Ballsun‑Stanton is leading Macquarie University’s Faculty of Arts understanding, policy, teaching, and research initiatives around the techniques and appropriate uses of Generative AI. With a PhD in Philosophy of Data that enables him to bridge theoretical frameworks with practical implementations, he has developed the university’s “Guidance Note: Using Generative Artificial Intelligence in Research” and pioneered AI integration across multiple disciplines, winning the 2025 Vice‑Chancellor’s Excellence in Research Integrity Award and receiving Highly Commended for the Vice‑Chancellor’s Innovation in Education Award. His implementations span Languages, Security Studies, and Law, each featuring unique aspects such as AI‑optional and AI‑required assessments, cross‑model critical evaluation, and simulations. He teaches the effective use and techniques of generative AI to undergraduate and post‑graduate students, reaching more than 1,500 students through various initiatives.

Brian has conducted invited workshops and presentations on LLMs for staff, postgraduate students, and external stakeholders internationally. He has delivered his “Introduction to LLM” workshop to early‑career researchers and postgraduate students across Australia, Europe, and the United States on more than 40 occasions and has advised organisations from the University of Tasmania and Aarhus University to NBNco on AI policy and implementation. His work on effective AI use has led to invitations from Oxford University, UK financial regulators via the Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum (DRCF), IEEE Silicon Valley, and multiple Australian universities to present and consult on policy, research, and practical pedagogy.

Research Profiles

• https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4932-7912
• https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gc0PEWQAAAAJ&hl=en
• https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/persons/brian-ballsun-stanton

Papers

• A university framework for the responsible use of generative AI in research
• The use of large language models as scaffolds for proleptic reasoning
  • Generative AI in Research: Disclosure & Documentation Guidance / Checklist

Preprints

• Teaching Students How to Effectively Interact with LLMs at University: Insights on the Longitudinal Development of AI-Locus of Control
  • Prompts
• Teaching the Unknown: A Pedagogical Framework for Teaching With and About AI
  • Prompts
• Reliability in research with large language models is a property of the human–AI system, a methodological case study of LLM-assisted research, submitted to Royal Society Open Science under open peer review
• Exploring the Archived Web through AI-Assisted Document Discovery, rendered through the Journal of Digital History viewer so the narrative, hermeneutics, and data layers all read from one address
  • Source notebook
  • LLM Document Discovery, the pipeline behind the article

Registered reports

• A Longitudinal Study of AI-Locus of Control in Higher Education, the Stage 1 preprint, which tests whether students’ orientation towards directing or deferring to AI shifts across a semester of teaching
  • Supporting materials, holding the survey instrument and the design simulations that set the evidence thresholds, all fixed before any response was examined
  • AI-LOC codebook, the pre-registered starting codebook reproduced in Supplement S5

Teaching With and About AI - Edited Volume preprints

• [https://zenodo.org/communities/iacap-aisb-25-teachingai/records?q=&l=list&p=1&s=10&sort=newest]

Courses

• Generative AI for Educators: AI Literacy & Prompting Skills, Macquarie University on Coursera, taught with Dr Jodie Torrington

Workshops and Teaching

• An Introduction to LLMs
• AI Summercamp 2025: Techniques and Ethics of Generative AI

Lectures

Macquarie University INTS1301, Technology and Society: From Plato to NATO. Each entry carries interactive slides, a PDF, and a PDF with speaker notes.

• Week 7: A History of AI Since the 1950s
  • Recording
• Week 11: Words Gooding, The Triumph of the Humanities
  • Recording
• Week 12: Civilization Under the Influence of AI, Five Possible Futures

Keynotes and presentations

• AI Multiplies Judgement: Using AI ethically and well in research practice, South Australian Research and Development Institute, 2026
  • Copilot custom instructions
• How Teaching Must Become Process-Oriented instead of Knowledge-Oriented from The Emperor’s New Clothes: A Manifesto for Universities in an AI-Haunted World
  • Prompts
• Research Use of LLMs: Beyond the chatbot
• Briefing on the Guidance Note on Generative AI in Research at Macquarie University from Guidance Note: Using Generative Artificial Intelligence in Research
• Avoiding Sadness: Research policy for Generative AI
  • Recording of the research methods guest lecture version

Other resources

• Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Undergraduate Assessment