VIRTUAL SOCIAL INTERACTION CONFERENCE 2021

JUNE 30- JULY 1 2021, GLASGOW

2 JULY 2021

We would like to thank everyone who took part and presented at the VSI. We were delighted that it was so well attended right from the start to the end. Thank you for the fantastic presentations and thought-provoking and collegial questions and answers at the sessions. Thank you also for all of your kind words to us organisers, but we were so very honoured to have been able to host this event for all the communities represeted.

Anna Strasser, one of the delegates at the event, has kindly shared a link to their website where their reflections of the event is available: http://denkwerkstatt.org/ANNA-STRASSER/MEMORY-SLICES/

The direct download of Anna’s amazing workshop summary & reflections can be accessed here!

UPDATE - 29 JUNE 2021

We are looking forward to welcoming you to the 5th Edition of VSI tomorrow! The schedule overview can be seen below, and an updated version of the PDF of the full conference programme/proceedings can be found here.

The order of talks and the times are correct in the timetable below; any last minute changes to the schedule will be communicated during the opening remarks and an updated schedule will be posted below if necessary.

While there is no cost to attend this meeting, we will require all participants to *register*. Those who submit posters and talks will automatically be registered. For those who wish to attend without submitting any work to share, please select “General admission” for registration at the link above. Any enquiries relating to registration, submissions or anything other matters, please email our NEW email address at VSI2021glasgow@gmail.com.

Registration is required in order to gain entry to the Zoom and Gather rooms. Registration will be capped at 100 people, so please ensure you register by 1 May 2021, however registration remains open, subject availability, until 1st July. We will be updating this page with more information about the meeting as it becomes available.

We look forward to seeing everyone online for what we hope to be a richly interactive and lively two days of discussion and debate concerning the future of virtual social interactions, given we have all had far more experience with these over the past year than we could have imagined!

With best regards,

Emily Cross, Maki Rooksby, Henry Powell & Terry Goetz

VSI2021 Organising Committee

New update (2 March 2021) – Online conference

Last year, the global pandemic prompted us to postpone the 5th Virtual Social Interactions (VSI) meeting, which was scheduled to take place in Glasgow in 2020 (see update below). Unfortunately, as of March 2021, pandemic-related restrictions on physical gatherings in the UK and on national and international travel are ongoing.

We have therefore taken the decision to move the meeting to an online format. We were very much hoping to hold the event in person this year, and are very sorry to have to let you know our difficult decision. The event will take place between 30 June and 1 July 2021, as previously scheduled. We anticipate few other changes to the conference but will communicate a revised programme, new registration arrangements and any other announcements both on this website and via email. For further information or if you have any other queries, please contact us at vsi2020glasgow@gmail.com. We will continue to provide any help we can.

Thank you for all your submissions, registrations and enquiries. We have processed a full refund to everyone who gave us permission to retain their registration fees last year. Hopefully, those of you who have submitted abstracts for talks or posters are still happy for us to consider these for presentation at the event, but please let us know about any changes.

Stay safe and well, and we look forward to seeing you at the (virtual) event!

Information regarding COVID-19 (27 April, 2020):

Like many other major academic conferences originally scheduled to meet during the March - Oct 2020 period, we have been hard at work to come up with an alternative plan for hosting our workshop at a time when people’s lives are less likely to be COVID-19. We can now confirm that will be shifting the 5th installment of the Virtual Social Interactions workshop to 30 June - 1 July, 2021. We’ll still be in Glasgow, we’ll still have the same fantastic group of keynote speakers, and we are still every bit as excited to see as many of you who can still join us up in Bonnie Scotland then! For delegates who have already registered for the 2020 meeting, please contact us at VSI2020glasgow@gmail.com to discuss whether you would like to be reimbursed or have registration rolled over to 2021. We will strive to provide whatever assistance we can to those who need it. If you require any more information about these matters or anything else relating to the event please do not hesitate to contact us at VSI2020glasgow@gmail.com. Please stay safe and be well, and we look forward to seeing you in Glasgow in June and July of 2021!

We are delighted to announce that the 5th Virtual Social Interaction (VSI) conference will be held at the University of Glasgow between 30 June and 1 July, 2021. The conference will showcase the latest cross-cutting research at the intersection of social interactions with intelligent agents, with talks and posters representing findings from psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, social robotics, engineering and computer science.

Keynote Speakers

We look forward to welcoming keynotes from leading scholars whose work spans several of these domains, including:

Leo Schilbach (MPI for Psychiatry, Munich)

Kerstin Dautenhahn (Waterloo, Ontario)

Stacy Marsella (Glasgow, UK)

Sylvia Xueni Pan (Goldsmiths, UK)

In addition, we are delighted to be welcoming Guido Orgs (Goldsmiths, UK) who will be leading an interactive workshop titled “Analog Immersion: Liveness in Dance, Theatre and Performance Art”

Organising committee

This conference is being organised by Emily Cross, Maki Rooksby and Henry Powell as part of the Social Robots project, a European Research Council-funded Social Neuroscience Research Project.

Location

The VSI conference will take place online due to the ongoing uncertainties and restirctions due to COVID.

We wish we could welcome you to bonnie Scotland, but nevertheless very much look forward to seeing you online for the latest installment of this exciting meeting!