Conference Program

Social robotics is often framed as an efficient solution to face demographic crisis, an ageing population and a shortage of healthcare staff in contemporary care systems (Wright, 2023; De Togni, 2024). At the same time, the increasing adoption of these technologies in residential settings raises important questions about the democratic governance of intelligent technologies and about how humans and nonhuman actors learn to coexist within institutional care environments. The introduction of social robotics is reshaping the everyday organization of dementia care and the relational practices through which care is enacted.

Drawing on Science and Technology Studies (STS) and practice-based approaches, this paper examines how a social robot becomes embedded in the sociomaterial practices of care in residential facilities for people living with dementia, as part of the broader research project ANTICIPATE. Rather than conceptualizing the robot as a therapeutic tool, the research approaches it as a technology-in-practice, whose meaning and effects emerge through situated interactions among human and nonhuman actors (Orlikowski, 2007; Timmermans and Berg, 2003). In this perspective, care practices are understood as sociomaterial arrangements in which heterogeneous elements — caregivers, residents, technological devices and organizational routines — are continuously ordered and stabilized in practice (Gherardi, 2006; Nicolini and Monteiro, 2017; Mol et al., 2010) .

Empirically, the paper draws on an ethnographic study conducted in an Italian nursing home where a robotic cat is used as a non-pharmacological intervention in therapeutic activities for residents living with dementia. Data collection combined ethnographic observation during therapy sessions, interviews with professional caregivers (educators and care workers) and visual materials produced during fieldwork.

The analysis shows that interactions with the robot generate situated processes of learning through which caregivers develop practical competences for orchestrating affective encounters between residents and technological actors. Through practices of observation, storytelling and affective attunement, caregivers learn to interpret residents’ responses and to stage interactions that enable meaningful engagement with the device (Persson et al., 2024; Redmalm et al., 2025). In this sense, therapeutic sessions become more-than-human learning environments where knowledge, care and affect emerge relationally in practice.
At the same time, social robotics contributes to the emergence of a politics of coexistence in care environments. Caregivers cultivate forms of response-ability (Haraway, 2016) — understood as the capacity to respond to the affects circulating between humans and nonhuman actors (Massumi, 2017) — through which residents, professionals and robots learn to inhabit shared spaces of care. Social robotics thus participates in shaping sociomaterial practices through which care, knowing and coexistence are continuously negotiated in residential dementia care. By examining these dynamics, the paper shows how everyday care practices contribute to shaping the democratic governance of emerging technologies within care institutions.