Dear Colleagues,

We are glad to invite you to submit your work in the form of an abstract (1 page) or short paper (2-4 pages) to the *GenR2021 workshop "Gendering Robots: Ongoing (Re)configurations of Gender in Robotics"*. The workshop will last half a day and will be held as part of the IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN 2021) on August 12th, 2021.

The workshop is intentionally *multidisciplinary*, hence we welcome submissions from all fields of study.

Below, you can find further information regarding important dates, workshop website, and call for papers.

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions and to circulate the call within your network.

Kindest regards,

Giulia Perugia

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*CALL FOR PAPERS - IEEE RO-MAN 2021 GenR WORKSHOP *

*GENDERING ROBOTS: Ongoing (Re)configurations of Gender in Robotics*

*IMPORTANT DATES & INFO*

Deadline for Paper Submission: June 30th, 2021

Paper Acceptance Notification: July 21st, 2021

Camera Ready Paper: July 28th, 2021

Main Conference Date: August 8th-12th, 2021

Workshop Date: August 12th, 2021

Workshop Website: https://sites.google.com/view/ro-man21-genr-workshop/home

Twitter: @GenR_ROMAN https://twitter.com/GenrRoman

Submission page: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=genr2021

Full call for papers: https://easychair.org/cfp/GenR2021

STATEMENT OF OBJECTIVES

Within the GenR workshop, we aim to provide researchers investigating gender in robotics with a platform to share their work and invite interested scholars to reflect with us on inclusive and ethical practices in robot gendering. We hope to explore motivations for robot gendering, and understand how robot gendering might impact human-robot interaction in the face of its risks with regards to stereotype propagation. Furthermore, we would like to inspire discussions about the mindful use of robots in society and promote the possibility to use robots to oppose/challenge harmful social practices (gender stereotypes, gender inequality, etc.). To this end, we invite those working in related domains (e.g. Social Robotics, and Gender Studies) to discuss with us best practices to re-configure gender in robotics and shed light on issues of gender from a multidisciplinary perspective. Our goal is to bridge the communication gap we observed between disciplines addressing the topic of gender in robotics and the lack of spaces to converse with and learn from one another.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

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Gendering practices in Social Robotics -

Experimental studies on gendered robots -

Feminist robotics -

Robot’s multimodal gender design -

Norm-critical design -

Queer design in HRI -

Sex Robots -

Ethics of Gendered Robots -

Normative deviance in relation to robot gender -

Societal implications and applications of gendered robots -

Performative arts encompassing a reflection on gender in robotics -

Non-binary perspectives on robot gender

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Since our workshop aims at bringing researchers from different fields together and starting a conversation on the process of gendering robots, we are open to two formats of submissions: abstracts (1 page) and short papers (2-4 pages). We particularly encourage multidisciplinary submissions presenting works in progress, as accepted authors will be invited to identify discussion points and questions they would like to put to our panelists and other attendees. In line with the intent of the workshop, we accept different types of submissions: empirical papers, experimental design protocols, philosophical essays, studies with preliminary results and more conclusive papers.

Authors should submit their papers formatted according to the IEEE two-column format http://ras.papercept.net/conferences/support/support.php, the same as the main conference (LaTeX http://ras.papercept.net/conferences/support/tex.php or MS-Word http://ras.papercept.net/conferences/support/word.php templates).

Authors should submit a PDF of their paper through EasyChair https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=genr2021.

Submissions will be evaluated according to their fit to the workshop theme, their thought-provoking content, and their adherence to the scientific standards of the discipline of origin. The reviews will consist of constructive feedback mindful of the authors’ multidisciplinary background. We will prefer qualitative evaluations to score-based numerical ones.

The workshop proceedings will be published on ArXiv and the authors will be invited to submit their work in a SPECIAL ISSUE.

INVITED SPEAKERS

Prof. Robert SPARROW, Monash University, Australia

Prof. Friederike EYSSEL, University of Bielefeld, Germany

PANEL DISCUSSION

Prof. Ericka JOHNSON - Linköping University (Sweden)

Dr. Katherine HARRISON- Linköping University (Sweden)

Prof. Verena RIESER- Heriot Watt University (UK) (TBC)

Dr. Megan STRAIT - University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (USA)

COMMITTEE

Dr. Giulia PERUGIA (main organiser), Uppsala University, Sweden, g************a@it.uu.se

Dr. Katie WINKLE, KTH, Sweden, w****e@kth.se

Ryan Blake JACKSON, Colorado School of Mines, USA, r******o@mymail.mines.edu

Dominika LISY, Linköping University, Sweden, d***********y@liu.se