Love in the time of tech

How is technology reshaping modern love? Join our panel to explore the rise of dating apps and their impact on intimacy, connection, and identity, the ethics of AI and robot companions, and the unique dating experiences of queer, religious, and global communities.

Come early or stick around after the panel for Fast Familiar’s interactive installation, Looking for Love. Set inside a retro internet café, this custom chat-app experience invites you to experiment, play, and ponder the ultimate question: can you teach a robot to love?

Dr Luke Brunning is a Lecturer in Applied and Inter-Disciplinary Ethics at the IDEA Centre in the University of Leeds, and his research interests lie in the philosophy of romantic life, ethics, and philosophy of emotion. He is the co-organiser of the Centre for Love, Sex, and Relationships and runs the Ethical Dating Online Research Network. He has also published several books: Does Monogamy Work?, Romantic Agency: Living well in modern life, and The Philosophy of Love, Sex and Relationships: An Introduction.

Kate Devlin is Professor of AI & Society in the Department of Digital Humanities at King's College London and is the current Chair-Director of the Digital Futures Institute. Her research investigates how and why people interact with and react to technologies, both past and future. Kate is also the author of the critically acclaimed Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots, which examines the ethical and social implications of technology and intimacy.

Dr Shannon Philip is an Assistant Professor in the Sociology of Gender and Sexuality at the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on the relationship between masculinities, femininities, and sexualities in cities of the Global South and has carried out long-term ethnographic and qualitative fieldwork in New Delhi and Johannesburg, exploring questions of men's violence towards women and queer people, as well as embodied performances of class, gender, and sexuality. His book, Becoming Young Men in a New India: Masculinities, Gender Relations and Violence in the Postcolony was published by Cambridge University Press in 2022, and he was awarded a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant in 2024 for his project, Digital Youth Masculinities, Dating Apps and Gendered Relationships in Digital India.

Fast Familiar is a creative collective of academics and artists who design experimental audience-centric installations where you can explore some of the biggest issues of our time, from AI to colonialism to the climate crisis. Part artwork, part consensual social experiment, part ethically cleared research, Fast Familiar is fascinated by social psychology and human connection in a rapidly changing world.

Free event, donations welcome, booking required.

As tickets are free, people sometimes book and don't attend, so we have to issue more tickets than there are seats available to allow for this. Entry into this event is on a first-come, first-served basis and we recommend arriving in good time to avoid any disappointment.

Registering for a ticket does not guarantee you entrance to the SHAPE Room. If the SHAPE Room reaches capacity, you will be directed to the Wohl Gallery next door to watch a live stream of the event.

This event will also be recorded and live streamed on YouTube.

This event has live subtitles delivered by 121 Captions.

See information about the accessibility of the venue.

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Host or Publisher British Academy