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Paper short abstract

This talk examines how imaginaries of healthcare robotics are produced, negotiated, and contested across public policy, engineering research, and nursing practice, and how the inclusion of marginalized perspectives can open possibilities for more just and care-centered sociotechnical futures.

Paper long abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics are increasingly promoted as solutions to pressing challenges in healthcare, from workforce shortages to demographic change. These narratives often rely on technosolutionist imaginaries that marginalize perspectives from those most affected by imagined technological interventions, particularly healthcare workers expected to integrate new technologies into everyday care practices.

The analysis draws on a multi-sited qualitative study of AI-enabled healthcare robotics in Germany, combining policy document analysis, ethnographic fieldwork within a robotics research initiative, and interviews and focus groups with nursing professionals. While policymakers and engineers largely converge around imaginaries that frame robotics as “assistive” technologies promising efficiency and relief for care workers, nursing professionals articulate more critical and situated perspectives – which, however, currently remain largely excluded from shaping collective imagination and decision-making. When given the opportunity, nursing professionals mobilize robotics as a lens to surface long-standing concerns about workload, professional autonomy, and the relational dimensions of care.

Building on feminist STS scholarship on care, I develop the concept of caring imaginaries – future visions that foreground relationality, situated knowledge, and the ethical commitments embedded in care practices. I discuss how caring imaginaries can be fostered through integrative “embedded ethics and social science” research and through participatory methods such as LEGO® Serious Play®. By centering nursing perspectives as sites of critical imagination, the talk shows how marginalized actors can reframe technological futures and contribute to imagining more just, relational, and context-sensitive forms of innovation.