This month, Research Associate Rachael Garrett submitted her doctoral thesis, “Somatic Freedoms: Reconfiguring Human-Machine Ethical Relations,” to the Department of Media Technology and Interaction Design at our partner institution, KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

Rachael’s PhD has been supervised by Kristina Höök and Airi Lampinen and supported by the WASP-HS Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program: Humanity and Society, along with the UKRI Turing AI World-Leading Researcher Fellowship: Somabotics: Creatively Embodying Artificial Intelligence.

Rachael’s research explores key questions at the heart of the Somabotics Fellowship, exploring how embodied experience shapes our understanding of human–robot interaction. Her work examines how we might better consider ethics in embodied interactions between humans and robots and how artist-driven approaches to embodied AI generate new pathways to designing meaningful human-machine relationships.

A public defence of Rachel’s thesis will take place on 28 August at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. Chaired by Madeline Balaam, Rachel’s thesis will be opposed by  Katherine Harrison (Linköping University) and grading Committee members Daniela Rosner (University of Washington), Wendy Ju (Cornell Tech), Christopher Frauenberger (IT:U).

Rachael’s full thesis is publicly available here