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About

Hannah Pelikan is a pioneering researcher at the intersection of human-robot interaction (HRI), multimodal conversation analysis, and ethnomethodology. Her work examines how humans and robots negotiate meaning, agency, and collaboration across diverse real-world settings — from family living rooms to hospital operating theatres and public streets. Pelikan's most celebrated contribution, "Why That Nao?" (2016, 84 citations), demonstrated how humans rapidly adapt their communication — adjusting word choice, turn length, and prosody — when interacting with humanoid robots. This conversation analytic lens became a hallmark of her methodology. Her surgical robotics research, including "Operating at a Distance" (2018, 59 citations) and "Sensing (Co)operations" (2019, 28 citations), revealed how robotic systems fundamentally restructure teamwork and sensory experience in operating rooms, drawing on two years of immersive hospital fieldwork. Equally notable is her attention to robot emotion and agency. "'Are You Sad, Cozmo?'" (2020, 56 citations) examined how families interpret emotional robot displays in naturalistic settings, while her 2024 study on public street robots (52 citations) reframed HRI beyond deliberate encounters. Her editorial leadership on sound in HRI further cements her role in shaping an emerging research frontier, making her an indispensable voice in contemporary robotics scholarship.