by Hannah Pelikan, Lynn de Rijk & Saul Albert
During the ICCA 2026 conference in Edmonton, on 26th of June, around thirty researchers interested in artificial intelligence and social interaction gathered for the first in-person meet-up of the EMCA/AI research network, which has been running regular online meetings for people interested in interaction analysis and agentic technology since 2020. The event was organized by Lynn de Rijk, Hannah Pelikan and Saul Albert.
The EMCAI network runs six online meetings per year. A popular meeting format for the online sessions is show-and-tell, where two or three network members show data of robots, voice user interfaces and artificial agents that they are currently working on. By presenting several snippets of data and emerging challenges alongside each other, we have been able to identify commonalities across different technologies regarding the particularities and challenges they pose for interaction studies. The network also runs regular reading sessions, covering aspects such as trust, agency and comparison to other non-human actors. Based on the questions that emerge from discussing empirical data and literature, we facilitate regular discussion sessions, where conceptual concerns such as post-humanistic perspectives on technology or methodological challenges such as collaboration across disciplines are discussed. After years of meeting online, ICCA provided an excellent opportunity for gathering in-person for the first time.
The great interest in the meetup demonstrated that social interaction research on AI is growing as a topic of interest for ICCA researchers. The event attracted scholars at all career stages, ranging from PhD students to senior professors, and was attended by members of the EMCAI research network as well as new participants who decided to join on the spot after attending the mobilizing technology panel organized by Florence Oloff, Uwe Küttner and Silke Reineke. Attendees work on technologies ranging from entertainment robots, self-driving vehicles, and virtual humans on a screen, to voice interfaces and assistive systems. While many study interaction with technologies, others were interested in using AI, in particular large language models, for data analysis. The gathering offered an opportunity to share experiences about working across disciplines and collaborating with interaction designers and engineers, as well as ethical concerns about the technologies we work on.
The gathering also provided a relaxed atmosphere to discuss career prospects of working at the intersection of ethnomethodology/conversation analysis and technology/design. While interdisciplinary work is currently rewarded by funding agencies, it can be hard to find an institutional home when the boundaries of humanities, social science and computer science are getting blurred. While studying interaction with technology is relevant for and can provide crucial input into the design of technology, studying interaction with agentic technology also offers a perspicuous setting for better understanding human interaction. However, this is not always well-understood by the departments we work in and publication venues we submit to.
While we are looking into future opportunities to gather in person, the network continues to run online meetings three times per semester. New members are welcome to join at any time!
Signup for the EMCAI research network mailing list: https://emcai.conversationanalysis.org/