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, as well as the ethics of AI and robot companionship, and the unique dating experiences of queer, religious, and international 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?

Speakers

Shahidha Bari (Chair)

Shahidha is a critic, academic, broadcaster, and Professor of Fashion Cultures and Histories at London College of Fashion. Her research interests range across the fields of literature, art, and film, with special interests in feminism, global fashion, sensory or embodied fashion, and phenomenology. She is the regular presenter of various programmes on BBC Radio 4, including Free Thinking, Start the Week, and Front Row. She has also presented documentaries on BBC TV, including hosting the topical arts programme, Inside Culture on BBC 2.

Dr Luke Brunning

Dr Luke Brunning is a Lecturer in Applied and Interdisciplinary Ethics at the IDEA Centre in the University of Leeds. His research interests lie in the philosophy of romantic life, ethics, and the 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, including Does Monogamy Work?, Romantic Agency: Living well in modern life, and The Philosophy of Love, Sex and Relationships: An Introduction.

Professor Kate Devlin

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

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

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 and 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.

Schedule

• 18:00: Doors and Fast Familiar installation opens
• 18:30-19:45: Panel discussion
• 20:00: Fast Familiar installation resumes
• 21:00: Event ends

Further information

Free event, donations welcome, booking required.

This event will be recorded and live-streamed via YouTube.

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 has live subtitles delivered by 121 Captions.

See information about the accessibility of the venue.

If you have any questions about this event, please refer to our Public Events FAQs. If your question is not answered, please email [email protected]

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