Dr. Giulia Perugia (she/they) is an Assistant Professor at the Human Technology Interaction group. She holds a BA in Literature and Linguistics from the University of Roma Tre (Italy), a MSc in Cognitive Science (Summa cum Laude) from the University of Siena (Italy), and a double degree PhD in Assistive Technologies from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC, Spain) and TU/e. Before joining the HTI group in 2021, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Uppsala Social Robotics Lab (Sweden) from 2018 to 2021. 

As a social scientist, Dr. Perugia's research lies at the intersection of Social Robotics, Science and Technology Studies (STS), and Ethical and Inclusive Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). She has extensively studied how people with dementia interact with leisure technologies, including social robots, and whether and how these technologies can be used to improve their quality of life.

Her current research investigates how AI technologies for people with dementia can be co-designed with people with dementia, as well as issues surrounding social robotic deception, with a particular focus on how such technologies become embedded in care organizational practices. She is also interested in people's perceptions of social robots: how these perceptions develop over time, particularly in unconstrained environments, and how they are shaped by robot design (e.g., gendered humanoid robots).

She received an Honorable Mention at the ACM/IEEE HRI Conference in 2022 and was shortlisted for the RSJ/KROS Distinguished Interdisciplinary Research Award in 2020, after receiving the award in 2017 for pioneering work on the measurement of psychophysiology in people with dementia.