This week sees the first residential graduate school on multi-agent system technology to be hosted in the Middle East: the IFAAMAS-sponsored Dubai Agents and Multi Agent Systems School (DAMAS). Iyad Rahwan, who runs the agents research group there, invited Chris to deliver a part of the course on argumentation in multi-agent systems. He’ll be giving a historical summary combined with introductions to both formal and informal approaches to argumentation, and then a detailed exploration of argumentation games in agent settings, all liberally sprinkled with practical exercises. The aim is to rapidly bring students up to speed with the key features of ArgMAS research from the last decade.

Chris is today giving a plenary talk at a workshop on effective argument hosted by the Educational Dialogue Research Unit at the OU. The event is being organised by Caroline Coffin and Kieran O’Halloran, who are working on interesting problems in the argument and education space. Chris will be talking about how effective argument can be encouraged, forced, and detected.

Chris is attending a workshop at Schloss Dagstuhl this week to contribute to a sketching out of where argumentation research is heading over the next few years. It promises to be an interesting meeting, which aims to produce a series of papers by the end of the year.