On Tuesday, Oct. 6, from 3–4 p.m. at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, Walter Biggins, editor-in-chief at University of Pennsylvania Press—will offer his perspective as both a longtime acquiring editor and as a writer on how the advent of AI affects the present and possible futures of scholarly publishing. In particular, he will discuss how the emerging technology creates concerns and unresolved tensions—ethical, legal, and otherwise—in publishing around intellectual property, peer review, the generation of text and art, as the value and reception of academic labor. Biggins will also address how AI affects the circulation and citation of texts, whether as books or scholarly journal articles.

Free and open to all.

RSVP by Wednesday, September 30.

Biggins is editor-in-chief at University of Pennsylvania Press, where he acquires titles in cultural studies, human rights, the intellectual and political history of the Americas, and Atlantic World and postcolonial studies. With Daniel Couch, he is the author of Bob Mould's Workbook (Bloomsbury, 2017). His work has been published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution; Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications; The Quarterly Conversation; RogerEbert.com; The Baseball Chronicle; and other periodicals.

He is serving as the Obermann Center's Editor-in-Residence from Oct. 5–7, 2026.