Photo of Hannah Pelikan

Hannah Pelikan

Assistant Professor

My research combines human-robot interaction and ethnomethodologic interaction design

Interacting with mobile autonomous systems

I take an ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (EMCA) perspective on human-robot interaction to study robots in everyday interaction.

My current work studies robots in public and I am particularly interested in the human wrangling work that makes robots (appear as) autonomous. I draw on a background in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, human-computer interaction and cognitive science to contribute an empirical understanding of how people interact with robots in everyday interaction. I draw on video recordings for analytical purposes and to develop methods for designing human-centered robots. My work advances interactional and embodied theories of human sociality and artificial intelligence.

Prior to my current position, I was a postdoctoral fellow in the WASP-HS AI in Motion project led by Barry Brown (Copenhagen/Stockholm) and Mathias Broth (Linköping), and a visiting researcher at the University of Nottingham (2025) where I collaborated with Stuart Reeves through a RAi UK international partnership. I graduated with a PhD in Language and Culture from Linköping University advised by Leelo Keevallik and Mathias Broth and I have been affiliated with Malte Jung’s Robots in Groups lab at Cornell University through multiple research visits. I hold a Dutch engineering degree in Interaction Technology from the University of Twente in the Netherlands and a bachelor’s degree in Cognitive Science from Osnabrück University, Germany.

Research Interests

  • Robots in public
  • Embodiment and Multimodality
  • Interaction design
  • Sound design

News

Research

Publications

2026

Hannah Pelikan, Airi Lampinen, Rachael Garrett, Emily Hofstetter, Amanda Hoskins, Hannah Kuehn, Iolanda Leite, Donald McMillan, Sergio Passero, Katie Winkle, Mathias Broth, Barry Brown, Kristina Höök (2026) Making Sense of the Felt Experience of Controlling Autonomous Systems DIS '26: Proceedings of the 2026 Designing Interactive Systems Conference, p. 4085-4100 (Conference paper) https://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3800645.3812868
Hannah Pelikan, Mathias Broth, Leelo Keevallik (2026) Managing Robot Perception: How Families Present Their Faces to a Toy Robot Symbolic interaction (Article in journal) https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/symb.70072
Barry Brown, Hannah Pelikan, Mathias Broth (2026) Walking with robots: Video analysis of human-robot interactions in transit spaces Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Conference paper) https://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3772318.3791828
Sofia Thunberg, Mafalda Gamboa, Meagan B. Loerakker, Patricia Alves-Oliveira, Hannah R. M. Pelikan (2026) Unpacking Lived Experiences of Wizards of Oz Companion Proceedings of the 21st ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, p. 1399-1401 (Conference paper) https://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3776734.3788834
Ilaria Torre, Maria Teresa Parreira, Hannah Pelikan, Erik Lagerstedt, Sarah Schömbs, Katie Winkle, Sara Ljungblad (2026) Sustainable Human-Robot Interaction: From Current Trends to Future Visions Social Robotics + AI, p. 484-499 (Conference paper) https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-981-95-2398-6_33

Education

Teaching

If you are a student in cognitive science or product design interested in working with me, please check my current projects for inspiration. I generally supervise user studies and interaction design projects. My main focus is on qualitative methods such as interaction analysis and ethnography as well as human-centered design. I have also supervised a number of survey and interview studies over the years.

I teach in the following courses:

Google Scholar

Visit my profile on Google Scholar for more details on my publications. 

Website

Visit my website for more information about my research.

Organisation