Interdisciplinary Dialogues of Digital Touch Communication 

InTouch is engaged in collaborations and interdisciplinary dialogues across a range of disciplines. This approach brings different aspects of touch to the fore in ways that are productive for research and design, for example, by creating new digital touch communication environments through making, speculative prototyping, staged scenario work, and generating artistic experiences that enable us as social scientists to investigate new forms or potentials of social touch.

All of our case studies involve an element of interdisciplinary working through a mix of research collaborations, workshops and events, research literature, methodologies and on-going dialogue, notably with:

• Artists: The Art of Remote Contact, Thresholds of Touch, The Lockdown Touch Diaries, and Touchy Narratives
• Designers: Imagining Remote Personal Touch and Designing Digital Touch)
• HCI, computer scientists and engineers: Tactile Emoticon, Virtual Touch, i-Skin & touch

Through these interdisciplinary dialogues, we seek to achieve a rich and nuanced account of digital touch communication, working across our methodological and conceptual differences to understand points of difference, and bring them into productive conversation.  InTouch collaborators include:

Professor Nadia Berthouze Professor in Affective Computing and Interaction, UCL Interaction Centre, connected to both the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences and Computer Science, Brain Sciences, UCL. Collaborator on the Tactile Emoticon case study.

Dr Frederik Brudy, Human Computer Interaction researcher and designer. Collaborator on the Tactile Emoticon case study.

Dr Aikaterini Fotopoulou Professor of Psychodynamic Neuroscience, Research Department of Clinical, Health and Educational Psychology, Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, Brain Sciences, UCL. Collaborator on the Tactile Emoticon case study.

Dr Falk Hübner composer, theatre maker and researcher and educator based at HKU University of the Arts and ArtEZ Netherlands, working in theatre, performance and interdisciplinary work. Collaborator on the Thresholds of Touch case study.

Dr Gijs Huisman, Assistant Professor of embodied interaction at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. Collaborator on the Manifesto for Touch in Crisis and Virtual Touch case studies.

Interactive arts studio Invisible Flock based at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park operating at the intersection of art and technology. Collaborators on The Art of Remote Contact case study.

Dr Val Mitchell, Senior Lecture in User Experience Design, Loughborough Design School, Loughborough University. Collaborator on the Designing Digital Touch case study.

Professor Jürgen Steimle, Head of the Human-Computer Interaction and Interactive Technologies Lab, at the Department of Computer Science at Saarland University, Germany. Collaborator on the A Manifesto for Touch in Crisis case study and the the forthcoming i-Skin and Touch case study.

Lisa May Thomas is a dance artist, filmmaker and researcher (University of Bristol), resident at Pervasive Media Studio in Bristol, and Studio Wayne McGregor 2019 QuestLab Network artist. Collaborator on The Lockdown Touch Diaries case study.

Dr Garrath Wilson, Lecturer in Industrial/Product Design, Loughborough Design School, Loughborough University. Collaborator on the Designing Digital Touch case study.

Marloeke van der Vlugt  is a Dutch performance artist and researcher at the HKU University of the Arts Utrecht who explores living in a technology driven, networked world and its impact on the body. Collaborator on the Thresholds of Touch case study.