Marie Rickert

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About

Marie Rickert is a leading voice in the emerging field of human-robot interaction, with a particular focus on the sociolinguistics of gender. Her research sits at the intersection of conversation analysis, gender studies, and robotics, exploring how people linguistically and socially negotiate gender when interacting with non-human agents. In her most-cited work, “Gender attribution trouble in interaction about a gender ambiguous robot” (2025, 3 citations), Rickert makes a foundational contribution by demonstrating that gender attribution is not merely a grammatical reflex but a dynamic, action-relevant practice. She reveals how participants in interaction actively “trouble” the binary, using linguistic resources to navigate ambiguity in ways that reflect broader social norms. This work has quickly become a touchstone for scholars studying the social construction of gender in technological contexts. By bridging ethnomethodology and robotics, Rickert provides critical insights for designing more inclusive and socially aware AI. Her research challenges engineers and linguists alike to consider how language shapes—and is shaped by—our encounters with the non-human, marking her as a key thinker in the future of socially intelligent systems.