Minna Nygren

I am a researcher interested in social embodiment, engagement, and design.

At UCLIC, I work alongside Professor Nadia Berthouze on the EPSRC-funded From Sensing to Collaboration-project, that focuses on understanding affect and touch practices in clinical settings, and opportunities to design robots to support training.

Prior to working at UCLIC, I was a Research Fellow at UCL Knowledge Lab working alongside Professor Sara Price on Move2Learn-project, jointly funded by the Wellcome Trust, ESRC and NSF. This project focused on young children's embodied meaning making in informal settings such as science museums. I was also a Research Associate on its sister project Move2Learn4Teachers (funded by ScotPEN), in collaboration with Edinburgh University. Through collaborative design with primary science teachers, it developed a teacher training course on Embodied Learning that will be offered by SSERC.

I gained my PhD (titled "Landscapes of Affective Interaction: Young Children's Enactive Engagement with Body Metaphors) in Human Development and Design. My doctoral studies were funded by the Wellcome Trust and conducted in conjunction with Move2Learn-project. The thesis focused on understanding young children's social interaction with body metaphors from an embodiment perspective through iterative design.