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About

Erika Kerruish is a leading scholar at the intersection of social robotics, phenomenology, and ethics, whose work critically examines the human labor required to build emotional bonds with machines. Her research focuses on how perception, imagination, and affect shape human-robot relationships, particularly in care settings. Kerruish’s most influential paper, “Assembling human empathy towards care robots” (2021, 19 citations), reveals the often-invisible human work that makes robot sociality possible, challenging assumptions about autonomous machine empathy. In “Perception, Imagination and Affect in Human–Robot Relationships” (2016, 8 citations), she probes the ethical urgency of encouraging people to form feelings toward companion and care robots. Her analysis of “Affective Touch in Social Robots” (2017, 8 citations) explores how physical intimacy with machines complicates our understanding of touch and materiality. Kerruish also draws novel insights from telepresence, using the Mars Explorer Rovers to illuminate Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the open perceptual circuit (2019). Her public engagement work includes the “Born or Built?” exhibition (2022), which invites visitors to question the boundaries between human and machine. With a cumulative impact of over 40 citations, Kerruish’s scholarship is essential for anyone grappling with the ethics of intimate human-robot relations.