Dr Mark Paterson is Assistant Professor in Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh and is contracted with Routledge to write Animal Automata and Lifelike Machines: Robots, Replicants and Companion Species. He is author of several books including The Senses of Touch: Haptics, Affects and Technologies (2007) and Movement, Measurement, Sensation: How We Became Sensory-Motor (Forthcoming, University of Minnesota Press). He is Vice-President of International Sociology Assoc. Thematic Group ‘Senses and Society’ and serves on the Editorial Boards of The Senses and Society and Emotion, Space and Society.
Dr Cherie Lacey is a lecturer in Media Studies at Victoria University of Wellington. Her research explores the ways in which the design of smart technologies mediates relationships, emotions, and affects. Cherie has published in the areas of data privacy and ethics, robot design, digital wellbeing, and user subjectivity, and is a member of Mataora: Encounters between Medicine and the Arts—a research group that explores health and wellbeing from creative and clinical perspectives.
Caroline Yan Zheng is a PhD candidate and visiting lecturer with Information Experience Design, Royal College of Art, London. She founded Affective Futures, an initiative for interdisciplinary participants to propose, probe and prototype the futures of our emotional life with technologies and robots. In collaboration with the Institute of Cancer Research UK, her current design research focuses on creating simulated affective touch using soft robotic interfaces and exploring its applications in improving patient experience.