Alexandra Gillespie

Research keywords: HCI, regulation, digital immortality, digital replica

Bio:

Alex is interested in how humans interact with anthropomorphized technologies. Her prioritization of interdisciplinary study and user input are through lines in her evolving research. Alex is from Connecticut, USA. She graduated with honors and distinction from Colby College in Maine, USA in May of 2025. She was a Computational Psychology major with minors in English in Philosophy, so interdisciplinary study has always been a cornerstone of her academic career. During her undergraduate degree, she primarily researched HRI with a a focus on assistive technologies. Her secondary focus was teaching ethics in computer science courses. Her papers have appeared in ACM and IEEE journals and conferences. Now, she’s interested in broadening her research to other forms of embodied technologies, namely forms of digital immortality in the form of digital replicas.

PhD research:

Alex is interested in determining how to ethically deploy digital immortality technologies (if such a thing is even possible) and how to regulate their administration and supervision. The lack of empirical evidence supporting their assistance to the bereaved has not stopped services from emerging, and trends in generative AI make large-scale adoption of these technologies even more likely. Alex’s work sits at a crucial moment where AI companions are broadly deployed, and companionship is developing to AI in an unprecedented way. Leveraging observations from psychological best practices for grief counselling, the death care industry, social media, and AI companions, Alex investigates how to keep human well-being at the center of the conversation and engage in translational, impactful research. Alex is more broadly interested in exploring these two questions: How is technology affecting human experiences and well-being? What can/should be done to protect and empower people?

Supervisors: James Garforth, Lachlan D. Urquhart, Nayha Sethi