Chloé Locatelli is a PhD candidate in the Digital Humanities department at King’s College London. She completed her Gender Studies' Masters with the Erasmus+ Programme at Universidad de Granada and University of Bologna. Her doctoral research looks at constructions of femininity in sextech and their posthuman potential. She is interested in sextech, ‘sex robots’, affinity with digital characters and other places where sex, intimacy and digital technologies meet – topics she also covers as a contributor to Futureofsex.net. Chloé has also produced several academic publications. Her latest contribution for Springer’s Maschinenliebe (2021), co-authored with Dr Kate Devlin, explores the emphasis on intimacy in sex robot marketing. 

Research

• Sex, intimacy and technology
• Technological constructions of femininity
• Sexual commerce and sex work online
• Embodiment and HRI
• Posthuman theory

For more details, please see her full research profile.

Teaching

Gender studies, Feminist Theory, Digital Culture, Feminist STS.

Expertise and public engagement

Chloé is a contributor to Futureofsex.net, covering sex tech developments with a feminist perspective for this online publication. To date she has provided multiple pieces, most notably articles exploring sex work online, performative technology and Japanese influences permeating emergent sex tech.

Selected publications

• Devlin, K. & Locatelli, C. (In press) ‘Guys and Dolls: Sex Robot Creators and Consumers’, in Oliver Bendel (ed.) Maschinenliebe. Springer Gabler. p.
• Locatelli, C. (2020) ‘Theorising Artificial Femininities in Sex-Tech: Previous Postulations and Future Directions’, in PLOTINA: Regendering Science. 28 January 2020 Università di Bologna: pp. 71–72.