Antonella De Angeli

University of Manchester, University of Trento, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano

Papers

Total Citations

173

H-Index

About

Antonella De Angeli is a researcher whose work sits at the intersection of human-computer interaction, human-robot interaction, and social computing, with a particular focus on how people attribute social qualities to technology. Her most influential contribution, "Gender Affordances of Conversational Agents" (2012, 142 citations), examined how users project humanlike characteristics — especially gender — onto conversational systems, shaping expectations and experiences in profound ways. This work remains a foundational reference in the field of agent design and user psychology. Beyond conversational interfaces, De Angeli has made notable contributions to robotics and assistive technology. Her research on robot motion planning with social force models and sensory guidance systems for robotic walkers reflects a commitment to making autonomous systems safer and more intuitive in human environments. More recently, she has pioneered scholarly inquiry into a provocative and ethically complex phenomenon: robot abuse. Her papers defining and operationalising aggression in human-robot interaction — including a comprehensive sociotechnical definition published in 2025 — have helped establish a rigorous framework for a previously undertheorised area. Across her career, De Angeli has consistently pushed researchers to consider the social and psychological dimensions of interacting with intelligent systems.