Mieke Breukelman

Papers

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About

Mieke Breukelman is a researcher at the intersection of human-robot interaction, conversation analysis, and gender studies. Her work critically examines how users navigate and negotiate gender when interacting with designedly gender-ambiguous robots—a design choice intended to avoid reinforcing gender stereotypes. Breukelman’s major contribution lies in empirically demonstrating that gender attribution is not merely a linguistic reflex but a socially embedded practice shaped by both the robot’s design and the ongoing interaction. Her most-cited paper (2024, 6 citations) uses conversation analysis to reveal how users, faced with a gender-ambiguous humanoid, actively produce and resolve “gender attribution trouble” in real time. A follow-up study (2025, 3 citations) further explores how gender becomes relevant to the participants’ social actions, showing that attribution is tied to both linguistic systems (e.g., person reference) and the practical demands of the interaction. Though early in her career, Breukelman’s work is already influential for researchers in social robotics, feminist technology studies, and multimodal interaction analysis. Her findings challenge simplistic notions of “neutral” design and offer a nuanced, data-driven account of how gender is co-constructed with machines.