Projects
Girls just want to have Sc(AI)ence
A series of workshops hosted in 2025 to discuss critical perspectives on AI. The workshops offered engaged and engaging encounters combining keynote talks with hands-on participatory reflections, inviting situated and concrete ways to use toolkits from feminist and critical perspectives in AI research. New dates for 2026 workshops and keynotes will be released soon!
Contact: valentina.fantasialucs.luse
2025 - Ongoing
MEET
MEET aims to advance current understanding of how children experience engaging in spontaneous social interactions with robots. To do so, we investigate the progressive building up and maintenance of interpersonal synchrony in spontaneous joint activities between child and robot. MEET is a collaborative interdisciplinary project with Iolanda Leite (KTH) and Daniel Benoit (MoRe Lab, Lund University) generously supported by LMK Stiftelsen.
Contact: valentina.fantasialucs.luse
2026-2028
MoMa
Movements Matters (MoMa) is a grounding project aimed at investigating the key role played by bodily movements for building positive interactions between humans and artificial social agents. In the project, we looked at the role of interpersonal synchronisation in building positive social interactions between humans and robots. We analyse a joint dynamic interaction between EPI, our humanoid robot, and human co-interactant, to explore whether higher kinematic synchrony improve the human perception of positive engagement with the robot. MoMa is a collaborative project with the Humanities Lab (LU), generously supported by the Crafoord Stiftelsen.
Contact: valentina.fantasialucs.luse
2023-2025
Social Interaction with Autonomous Systems
This project endorses an embodied, situated perspective to investigate the interactional dynamics between humans and social autonomous systems. Embodiment has become an important concept in many areas of cognitive science; however, while many would agree that humans are embodied cognisers, there is much less agreement on what kind of humanly crafted artifacts could be considered embodied. The project seeks to explore this issue by integrating theories and methods from cognitive science, philosophy, and robotics (but also drawing on sociology, ethnomethodology, and linguistics). The project was generously funded by The Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program – Humanity and Society (WASP-HS).
Contact: valentina.fantasialucs.luse
2021-2027
Designing and Exploring Robotic Imaginaries in Children
PhD Project Topic Title: Investigating children’s ontological understanding of robots from a feminist perspective
The project investigates how individuals, particularly children, conceptualize, perceive and interact with technologies such as robots. I examine how social dynamics include power relations, gender and expectations with and around these shape understandings of and encounters with robots. Drawing on Feminist technoscience, Science Technology Studies (STS), and Developmental psychology, my research situates Human- Technology (child-robot) interactions within their broader social, cultural and institutional contexts such as schools.
Methodologically, my project employs qualitative and child-centered research methods to foreground children’s perspectives and lived experiences. These include drawing-based methods, role-play, and story construction that enable children to express meanings, imaginaries, and expectations of surrounding technologies in accessible and creative ways.
Through these methodological and theoretical integrations, my project aims to support the development of more inclusive, responsible and ethically informed models of human-robot interaction, grounded in the voices and experiences of those who engage with, imagining these technologies in different ways/contexts.
Contact: