Nadia Berthouze

Dr. Nadia Bianchi-Berthouze

I am a lecturer at the UCL Interaction Centre, University College London.

The premise of my research is that affect, emotion, and subjective experience should be factored into the design of interactive technology. Indeed, for technology to be truly effective in our social network, it should be able to adapt to the affective needs of each user group or even each individual. The aim of my research is to create systems/software that can sense the affective state of their users and use that information to tailor the interaction process. Body movement appears to be a promising medium for this goal: it supports cognitive processes, regulates emotions, and mediates affective and social communication. I am currently pursuing three lines of research looking at body movement as a medium to induce, recognize and measure the quality of experience of humans and in particularly of humans interacting and engaging through/with technology. I am trying to identify the various factors that affect the recognition process, including cross-cultural differences and task context. Finally, I am looking onto the existence of dialects in affective body movement communication, including avatar-specific dialects. I was awarded a 2 years International Marie Curie Reintegration Grant started in 2006 to investigate these issues in the clinical context and in the gaming industry . More information on the project AffectME supported by this grant can be found here.

Current grants

  • SENSORIA , EPSRC Grant,EP/H007083/1, 2009-20011
  • AffectME , Marie Curie International Reintegration Grant, MIRG-CT-2006-046434, 2008-2010
  • Other information

  • Various roles and grants
  • Publications listed by date
  • Publications listed by theme


  • The UCLIC Database of Affective Postures and Body Movements

    Examples of acted postures Examples of non acted postures

    We are creating a database of affective postures and affective body movement. If you are interested in using it for academic purpose, please contact us n.berthouze@ucl.ac.uk or a.kleinsmith@cs.ucl.ac.uk

    Contact details

    UCL Interaction Centre (UCLIC)
    University College London
    Malet Place Engineering Building, 8th floor
    Gover Street
    London WC1E 6BT, UK

    Tel. +44 (0)20 7679 0690 (internal: X30690)
    n.berthouze@ucl.ac.uk