SSH-XR is launching a seminar series that showcases research using virtual reality and other immersive technologies across the social sciences and humanities.
Time: 14:15–15:45
Location: Unioninkatu 37, Faculty meeting room (Room 1066) + hybrid on Zoom (link will be sent before each seminar)
Upcoming seminars
24 April 2026: Anna Manfredi (University of Milano-Bicocca), From avatars to intergroup contact in virtual reality and beyond.
Registration:
Abstract. Virtual reality (VR) has become a promising tool for intergroup contact research because it allows socially rich, experimentally controlled encounters through embodied avatars, while overcoming many practical constraints of face-to-face contact. A central assumption in this literature, however, is rarely tested directly: that ethnically marked avatars are spontaneously perceived as outgroup members. This assumption matters because contact effects depend not only on exposure or interaction, but also on whether the encounter is psychologically construed in intergroup terms. A four-study research program addressed this question by examining when avatars become outgroup members in virtual environments. A pilot study in immersive VR showed that participants were unlikely to construe a single Black avatar as an outgroup member. Study 1 extended this issue beyond immersive VR by comparing avatars with photographs of real people and found that the avatar format elicited weaker outgroup categorization than photographs. Study 2 then used a within-subject factorial design with screen-based 2D avatar stimuli manipulating three category-diagnostic cues—ethnicity, stereotypicality, and numerosity—and showed that outgroup construal emerged primarily when these cues converged. Study 3 replicated the same manipulation in immersive VR and reinforced the same pattern: ethnic appearance alone was not sufficient, whereas Black avatars presented in groups and wearing stereotypical clothing were much more likely to be categorized as outgroup members. Across studies, the findings support a cue-threshold account of social categorization in virtual environments: weak or ambiguous cues foster individuating or inclusive construals, whereas convergent cues make intergroup boundaries psychologically operative (Manfredi et al., 2026). This work was followed by a study designed to test an intergroup contact paradigm using the avatar configuration most likely to elicit a perception of an outgroup. In a multiplayer virtual environment specifically developed for this purpose, White participants embodied white avatars placed within a group of three white avatars and interacted with a Black avatar similarly placed within a group of three Black avatars dressed in stereotypical attire. The results showed that implicit bias exhibited a significant overall pre-post reduction, qualified by a condition-specific pattern: IAT scores decreased most in the intergroup condition, while remaining relatively stable in the ingroup condition. These results suggest that contact in virtual reality is more likely to involve the expected intergroup processes when category salience is designed rather than assumed. The same broader issue extends beyond immersive virtual reality, as interactions with avatars can also occur in non-immersive digital environments. A recent pre-registered study moves in this direction, testing a three-day electronic contact intervention with a 3D digital human driven by artificial intelligence representing either an ingroup or outgroup partner in a one-to-one interaction grounded in the Dual Identity Model (Manfredi et al., 2025). This line of work broadens the study of technology-mediated contact from immersive VR to AI-based artificial humans, while opening a further question for future research: how different avatar-based formats shape the social meaning of the contact partner and, in turn, the effectiveness of intergroup contact interventions.
Bio. Anna Manfredi is currently a final-year PhD candidate in Social Psychology at the University of Milano-Bicocca. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Psychological Sciences from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (UniMoRe) and her master’s degree in Social, Economic, and Decision-Making Psychology from the University of Milano-Bicocca. Her research focuses on the use of emerging technologies, particularly virtual reality and artificial intelligence, to reduce prejudice and improve intergroup attitudes. Her broader research interests include group and intergroup dynamics and the role of new technologies in social psychological processes.
Past seminars
19 March 2026: Nina Rapoport (Aix-Marseille School of Economics), Looking the part: Gender, virtual bodies and willingness to compete
Abstract. Gender gaps in willingness to compete are well documented and contribute to disparities in educational and career trajectories. This paper investigates whether a virtual gender-swap affects willingness to compete. To test this, I use virtual reality to assign participants male- or female-looking virtual bodies. I find no evidence that varying the gender of the virtual body affects self-selection into competition. Instead, simply being embodied in a virtual body—regardless of whether its appearance matches one’s sex—impairs women’s performance and amplifies the gender gap in willingness to compete. These findings suggest that interventions targeting gender cues may have unintended consequences for gender equality.
Bio. Nina Rapoport is a postdoctoral fellow at Aix-Marseille School of Economics. Her research lies at the intersection of economics and psychology, with a focus on the psychological mechanisms underlying gender inequality in the labor market. Alongside traditional experimental methods, she incorporates virtual reality interventions, as well as insights from psychology and cognitive science. She obtained her PhD from the Paris School of Economics in 2025 and was previously a member of the Behavioral Economics Group at the Inter-American Development Bank.
12 February 2026: Romi Mikulinsky (Tampere University), Speculative Publics: Designing Governance for Phygital Environments
Abstract. The rise of smart glasses and spatial computing signals a dramatic transformation in how people perceive and engage with the world around them. Unlike screen-based devices that pull our attention away, these systems embed digital overlays directly into everyday environments, blurring the line between the physical and the computational. We call these hybrid environments “phygital spaces” (Altshuler et al., 2025) to emphasize their social, cultural, and ethical implications, rather than their underlying technical infrastructure.
With the introduction of AI-enhanced glasses by Meta and Google, and new XR devices by companies such as Samsung and Apple in 2026, AI-driven interfaces will become widespread (Williams 2025). Unlike traditional algorithmic systems, phygital spaces rely on continuous AI sensing, inference, and prediction that shape what users perceive and how they interact with other people, machines, and their surroundings. Existing governance approaches, including Privacy by Design (Cavoukian, 2009) and Human Rights by Design (Yeung et al., 2019), remain anchored in data protection, overlooking the relational, embodied, and socio-spatial transformations introduced by AI-mediated perception. Building on insights from critical STS, digital rights, and design research (Bendor 2021, Bleecker et al., 2023, Dunne & Raby, 2013), this paper argues that the convergence of AI and XR profoundly transforms socio-spatial dynamics, public spaces, and collective rights - yet remains under-theorized and insufficiently regulated.
Our paper presents a year-long interdisciplinary research programme bringing together policymakers with interaction designers, producing an innovative methodology for translating values and rights associated with near-future technologies into the language of regulation. The methodology combined:
1) speculative scenarios and worldbuilding to articulate near-future contexts where AI-enhanced glasses are common;
2) legal mapping to examine how these scenarios fit - or exceed - current rights frameworks;
3) field diaries documenting existing public spaces while imagining their transformation under AI-mediated vision;
4) participatory role-play workshops where experts from law, technology, urban innovation, and design enacted conflicting roles within simulated phygital environments. These gamified workshops surfaced ethical, and interpersonal tensions (“unknown unknowns”) that traditional empirical methods fail to capture.
We developed a new framework for governing phygital public spaces, entitled “the Ethics of Interactions.” We identified five modes of interaction: person-to-person, person-to-space, person-to-reality, person-to-machine, and person-to-platform (P2P, P2S, P2R, P2M, P2PL). These modes provide an analytical lens for understanding shifts in visibility, trust, autonomy, privacy, and shared experience.
Our findings show how AI-driven overlays shape public space by selectively highlighting or suppressing environmental cues; how AI-assisted perception destabilizes shared reality, producing divergent experiences of the same environment; and how AI inference enables new forms of interpersonal surveillance, including emotion tracking and behavioural prediction. We further show how AI’s infrastructural role redistributes power across urban spaces, individuals, and platforms, echoing broader debates on platform governance, spatial justice, and infrastructural publicness (Frischmann and Benesch, 2022; Crawford, 2021).
Taken together, these insights demonstrate that design-led methodologies offer a valuable contribution to shaping regulatory futures. Speculative scenarios and participatory enactments allow policymakers to experience emerging sociotechnical dynamics in a situated, affective, and immediate way, enabling them to identify governance blind spots at a formative stage.
Bio. Romi Mikulinsky is a design strategist, researcher, and game designer working at the intersection of emerging technology, ethics, and societal transformation. With over 20 years of experience across academia and the international IT and media industries, she develops participatory tools, game environments, and gamified foresight formats for municipalities, foundations, and research consortia in Europe, Japan, and Israel. Formerly Head of the Master’s Program in Industrial Design at Bezalel Academy, she holds a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto and is currently a researcher at Tampere University’s Game Research Lab, exploring how AI, spatial computing, and immersive environments reshape cities, workplaces, decision-making, and collective imaginaries.
In 2026, SSH-XR will organise two City Centre campus-wide methodology workshops. The workshops will focus on qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches to virtual reality, offering hands-on examples, tools, and space for peer feedback.