SOCIAL BRAIN IN ACTION LABORATORY

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A year on from the seismic events that spurred our lab to spend time actively engaging with and reflecting on our roles and resposibilities for promoting social equality, the SoBA Lab held a provocative, stimulating and constructive lab meeting assess what we've been learning and what actions we want to take to make further progress in this area, both as individuals and as a lab. Please visit our our social equality page for our ongoing thinking and updates about our discussions and actions in this domain.

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While lockdowns continue and research life as we previously knew it continues to elude us, some green shoots have been emerging in the SoBA Lab in both the UK and Australia. #TeamSoBots members Amol and Katie have been working with St. Brides and Broomhill primary schools in Glasgow to introduce children to WallBo, a friendly social robot that teaches proper handwashing technique. Meanwhile, Sydney-based #TeamSoBots members Nate, Aitor and Ryssa have been busy working on developing the 'Reading with Robots' intervention study, with lots of piloting and demos for outreach days at Macquarie University.

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The winds of change are a-blowing in the SoBA Lab! In the past few weeks, we have bid adieu to some stellar and longstanding lab members, including Ruud, Bish and Michaela (all going on to fabulous and shiny new roles!), and welcomed a ton of new faces to our Glasgow and Sydney teams, including Nate, Amol, Aitor, Ayeh, Gabriella, and Alysha, and we cannot wait to welcome two PhD students to Sydney who were former SoBA Lab MSc students in Glasgow, Jean-Noël & Katerina! We're still updating webpages and profiles, but are very excited to be welcoming so many new faces and so much fresh energy!  And hey, maybe we'll actually get to start doing more science in person before too long too!