Peter Kirstein Lecture 2026: Katie Winkle
Designing Robots, Designing Society: Opportunity or Automating Inequality? Join Katie Winkle (Uppsala University) to explore how robots could shape a fairer future – or deepen inequality.
Abstract
We are at a pivotal moment in the history of robotics.
Robots are quietly moving from novelty to normal, increasingly found on our streets, in our hospitals, schools and homes.
At the same time, social inequality is skyrocketing: polarisation is increasing, economic inequality is growing, gender equality is going backwards.
Robots have the power to change our behaviour, influence our thinking and shape how we interact with each other; will they help solve these problems?
Or will they make everything worse? I’ll argue that designing robots is really an act of designing society, I believe they really can unlock more equal, joyful and meaningful ways of living, but only if we start thinking (and designing) differently.
We need to move beyond the narrow visions promoted by big tech and work towards human-machine futures that reflect the kinds of societies we want to live in.
Science‑fiction visions of robot dystopias are a real possibility, but they are not inevitable.
There is still time to do better, to do different.
To quote John Connor, in his quest against Skynet: “the future has not been written. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.”
Katie will argue that designing robots is really an act of designing society; she believes they really can unlock more equal, joyful and meaningful ways of living, but only if we start thinking (and designing) differently.
Fireside Chat
The lecture will be followed by a fireside chat featuring Katie Winkle and Yvonne Rogers, Professor of Interaction Design at UCL, moderated by Dr Victoria Austin, Co-Chair of the Department’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Committee.
The event will conclude with a reception in the Winter Gardens.
About the speaker
Katie is an assistant professor at the Department for Information Technology at Uppsala University.
She previously held a Digital Futures postdoctoral fellowship at KTH Royal Institute of Technology and completed her PhD in Robotics and Autonomous Systems at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory.
Her research sits at the intersection of robotics, design, and the social sciences to tackle technical and societal challenges relating to human-machine interaction.
From empirically grounded research to speculative design, her work examines how robots and autonomous systems reflect and influence structures of power.
In particular, she is concerned about the ways such systems risk reifying existing social inequalities, and works to unlock more equitable, meaningful, and socially responsible futures through the design of human-machine interactions.
Her award-winning work on feminist human-robot interaction has gained significant attention within the field and is helping to define new, critical directions of research on the design of robots and their interaction behaviours.
