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About

Amelia DeFalco is a humanities scholar whose work sits at the dynamic intersection of care ethics, posthumanism, and technology studies. Best known for her groundbreaking 2020 essay "Towards a Theory of Posthuman Care: Real Humans and Caring Robots" — her most cited work with 95 citations — DeFalco challenges deeply held assumptions about the relationship between humanity and caregiving, arguing that ethical care need not be exclusively human in origin. By drawing on fictional representations of robotic caregivers, she constructs a theory of posthuman care that dismantles the anthropocentrism embedded in traditional care ethics while preserving its fundamental moral commitments. Her scholarship has expanded to explore the cultural politics of affective technotouch, the queering of sex robot representation, and the philosophical implications of robotic parenting and prosthetic memory. Across these projects, DeFalco consistently interrogates how emerging technologies reshape intimacy, embodiment, and social relations. Her editorial and theoretical work on affective technotouch further signals her growing role as a field-shaper in critical technology studies. For students engaging with posthumanist ethics, feminist theory, or the cultural dimensions of AI, DeFalco's body of work offers an indispensable and provocative framework for rethinking what — and who — care can look like.