Fiona Andreallo is an early career researcher and EC fellow at RMIT University, Melbourne with a research focus on technological-human relationships. She has published in interdisciplinary and digital cultures journals on the topic of social robots, dementia care as well as gender representation and gender performance. Fiona’s current work extends from her book that identifies Technological cultural Touch as multiply significant and meaningful. Focusing on algorithms as neither intelligent nor artificial but designed by humans and representative of cultural ideologies, Fiona has begun to consider the ways technology can be understood as practices of cultural Touch. Touch is an important but often overlooked element of health, well-being and communication. The focus of cultural Touch aims toward caring futures as well as providing a novel way to examine the ways technology both enables and constrains. Download the open access book here
Christoph Bartneck is an associate professor in the department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at the University of Canterbury. He has a background in Industrial Design and Human-Computer Interaction, and his projects and studies have been published in leading journals, newspapers, and conferences. His interests lie in the fields of Human-Computer Interaction, Science and Technology Studies, and Visual Design. More specifically, he focuses on the effect of anthropomorphism on human-robot interaction. As a secondary research interest he works on projects in the area of sport technology and the critical review on scientific processes and policies. In the field of Design Christoph investigates the history of product design, tessellations and photography.
Janet Biggs is a research-based, interdisciplinary artist known for immersive work in video, film and performance. Biggs navigates territory between art, science and technology, focusing on individuals in extreme landscapes or situations. She has filmed inside active volcanos and in both polar regions. Biggs has worked with institutions from NOAA to NASA, collaborating with neuroscientists, aerospace engineers, astrophysicists and a robot. Biggs, a Guggenheim fellow, has exhibited at US and international museums, galleries and biennials. Her work has been reviewed in the New York Times, New Yorker, ArtForum, ARTNews, and Art in America. She works with Cristin Tierney Gallery, NYC.
Chris Chesher is senior lecturer in Digital Cultures in the Department of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney. His recent research addresses material, semiotic and social aspects of spatiality with social robotics, smart homes, smart cities, and internet real estate advertising. He is the lead guest editor of a forthcoming special issue of the International Journal of Social Robotics on the theme ‘Beyond Anthropomorphism’. His forthcoming book Invocational Media; Reconceptualising the Computer will be published by Bloomsbury in 2023. https://www.sydney.edu.au/arts/about/our-people/academic-staff/chris-chesher.html
Arisa Ema is an associate professor at the University of Tokyo and Visiting Researcher at RIKEN Center for Advanced Intelligence Project in Japan and Research Support Advisor at AIST Department of Information Technology and Human Factors. She is a researcher in Science and Technology Studies (STS), and her primary interest is to investigate the benefits and risks of artificial intelligence by organizing an interdisciplinary research group. She is a co-founder of Acceptable Intelligence with Responsibility Study Group (AIR) established in 2014, which seeks to address emerging issues and relationships between artificial intelligence and society. She is a board member of the Japan Deep Learning Association (JDLA). She was also a member of the Council for Social Principles of Human-centric AI, The Cabinet Office, which released “Social Principles of Human-Centric AI” in 2019. https://ifi.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/people/ema-arisa/
Kaoru Endo is a professor of sociology at Gakushuin University. She studied integrated science in the Department of Integrated Science in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Tokyo and received her Ph. D. degree from the Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology. She is particularly interested in issues of social, historical, and cultural acceptance of technology, including the Internet, AI, and robotics. She is the author of numerous articles and books. Her main publications include “Electronic World,” “The Internet and Public Opinion Formation,” “Angels Singing in the Ruins,” “When a Robot Comes to Your House : The Future of Humans and AI” and “Social Media and Publicness. She is currently Vice President of the Japan Sociological Society and President of the Society for Computational Social Science.
Justine Humphry is a senior lecturer in Digital Cultures in the Department of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney. Justine researches the cultures and politics of smart, mobile and data-driven platforms in everyday life. Her research addresses digital inequalities, smart cities and urban datafication, and the mediation of home and urban space. She has researched homelessness and mobile communication featured in her recently published book, and collaboratively researched mobile apps and antiracism, smart voice assistants, smart street technologies and robots in public space. https://www.sydney.edu.au/arts/about/our-people/academic-staff/justine-humphry.html
Divesh Lala is a researcher at Kyoto University, Japan. His main research area is spoken dialogue systems for human-agent interaction. He previously worked on the ERATO project using the realistic android ERICA and is currently implementing human-like behaviours such as backchannels, turn-taking and laughter into robots and virtual characters. He co-authored a paper on shared laughter in human-robot interaction which has recently been featured in international media.
Duri Long is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University. She is a human-centered AI researcher interested in issues surrounding AI literacy and human-AI interaction. Duri’s research looks at how humans interact and learn as a way of informing the design of public AI literacy interventions as well as the development of AI that can interact naturally and improvise creatively with people in complex social environments. She employs a variety of methodologies and theoretical frameworks in her research, drawing on the learning sciences, design research, and cognitive science. She has experience working with artists and museums around the country to develop co-creative, embodied exhibits and art installations involving AI and technology. Duri holds a PhD in Human Centered Computing from Georgia Tech and degrees in Computer Science and Dramatic Art from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Christopher John Müller is a senior lecturer in Cultural Studies & Media at Macquarie University, Sydney. His work focuses on the intersection of technology, cultural politics, and the deceptive “immediacy” of feeling. He is the author of Prometheanism: Technology, Digital Culture and Human Obsolescence (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), which includes an English translation of Günther Anders’ “On Promethean Shame”. His articles, translations and reviews have appeared in Parallax, Thesis Eleven, CounterText, TrippleC, Textual Praxis andModernism/modernity. Chris is part of the editorial team of The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism(2022) and he co-edits the Genealogy of the Posthuman, an open access, ISSN accredited online platform on www.criticalposthumanism.net.
Benjamin Nickl is a lecturer in Comparative Literature and Translation Studies at The University of Sydney’s School of Languages and Cultures. He is interested in cultural technologies such as humour and the digital reproducibility of laughter, having written a book (Turkish German Comedy, Leuven University Press, 2020) that examines both at the intersection of pop culture and mass mainstream entertainment. Ben is also co-editor of the Science and Popular Culture Journal and editor of the Global Germany book series. Forthcoming work to appear in 2023 includes among other things the digital production of artificial feeling through the plasmatic animation tech of The Walt Disney and Pixar Film Production Studios.
Juan David Rubio Restrepo is an artist/scholar and is currently Assistant Professor of Music and Chicano Studies at The University of Texas at El Paso. His creative practice and scholarly research consider different types of Latin American popular musics and global experimental practices. Juan David holds a Bachelor of Music in Jazz Studies and Drum Kit Performance from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Bogotá, Colombia), a Master of Fine Arts in Integrated Composition, Improvisation, and Technology from the University of California, Irvine, and a Ph.D. in Music with a focus on Integrative Studies from the University of California, San Diego. An active drummer, composer, and music technologist, Juan David has performed physically and telematically in venues across the globe. He writes in English and Spanish on music, alterity, sound technologies, and power.
Richard Savery is a developer of artificial intelligence and robotics, using music and creativity as a medium to program better interactions, understandings and models. He is currently a Research Fellow at Macquarie University, developing new robotic musicians.
He completed a PhD in Music Technology (minor in Human Computer Interaction), at the Georgia Institute of Technology, graduating in 2021. His current research focuses on the creation of new drumming and rapping robot, as well as robots painting to music and musical captcha.
Yuji Sone is a senior lecturer in the Department of Media, Communications, Creative Arts, Language and Literature at Macquarie University in Australia. Yuji is a performance researcher and teaches performing arts and creative industries courses with an emphasis on praxis in relation to cultural studies and media studies. His research has focused on the cross-disciplinary conditions of technologized performance. He is the author of Japanese Robot Culture: Performance, Imagination, and Modernity (2017), which examines the Japanese affinity for the robot through contemporary performing robots. Yuji is the organiser of the current symposium Robots, AI and Culture, which follows the 2021 webinar Japanese Culture and the Acceptance of Social Robots.
Celia Spoden is a senior research fellow at the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ) in Tokyo with a background in social sciences and philosophy. Her research focusses on the social impact of the digital transformation and on (bio-)ethical issues in general. https://www.dijtokyo.org/people/celia-spoden/
Chris Stanton investigates human factors that influence trust and teamwork in teams comprised of people and intelligent machines. He works for Western Sydney University as a research fellow in human-machine interaction, and for Defence Science Technology Group (DSTG) as a science advisor. Recent research projects investigate the introduction of automation in submarine control rooms, the development of autonomous systems for naval mine-counter measures, the measurement of cognitive load when using augmented reality, and how a single person can effectively supervise as many autonomous vehicles as possible with the aid of autonomous teammate. In basic research, Dr Stanton has investigated how psychosocial factors can influence trust towards humanoid robots and artificial intelligence. Prior to joining Western Sydney University in 2012, Dr Stanton was a member and development leader of several autonomous robot soccer teams at universities including UTS, The University of Newcastle Australia, and the University of Science and Technology China.
Shanti Sumartojo is associate professor of Design Research in the Department of Design and a member of the Emerging Technologies Research Lab at Monash University. Grounded in human geography, and with a strong commitment to interdisciplinary and collaborative scholarship, her research includes theoretically-informed inquiry into the entanglements of the spatial, digital, sensory and affective in people’s experiential worlds. Across a range of different empirical settings, she investigates how people engage with and understand design and technology in their surroundings, particularly in shared, public spaces and events. A recent focus has been on robots in public space, how they are productive of urban spatiality, and how people experience these technologies. To support this, she develops digital, visual, sensory and design ethnographic techniques, approaches that she also teaches and publishes on. https://research.monash.edu/en/persons/shanti-sumartojo