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About

Donald McMillan is a leading voice at the intersection of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) and feminist technology studies, fundamentally reshaping how we design and evaluate social robots. His landmark paper, "Feminist Human-Robot Interaction" (2023, 103 citations), provides a visionary framework for embedding ethical, gender-aware practices into HRI, directly challenging the industry's default norms. Building on this, his highly influential work "Boosting Robot Credibility and Challenging Gender Norms in Responding to Abusive Behaviour" (2021, 74 citations) empirically demonstrates how feminist design can empower robots to resist gendered abuse and encourage underrepresented groups, like girls, to pursue robotics. McMillan’s research also advances the foundational understanding of how we converse with machines, notably through his work on Human-Robot Conversational Interaction (HRCI) and theories of language use with conversational user interfaces. His unique ability to bridge critical social theory with rigorous empirical design has made him a pivotal figure in creating more equitable and credible robotic systems, earning him significant recognition for pioneering a more just future for human-robot relationships.