As domestic technologies evolve, their impact reaches far beyond efficiency—shaping how we live, interact, and care within the household. In this joint seminar, two researchers explore the social implications of smart domestic technologies from complementary perspectives.

Dr. Lulu P. Shi will present insights from ongoing research on the future of unpaid domestic labour. She examines how emerging technologies may shift caregiving responsibilities, influence gender dynamics, and raise concerns around social exclusion and privacy. Her talk focusses on how the adoption of smart devices transforms the texture of everyday domestic life.

Building on this broader perspective, Dr. Yumiko Oda discusses how these changes are affecting home life in practice. Her ethnographic study explores how Japanese families, particularly married women, integrate robot vacuum cleaners into daily life. By investigating the cultural and emotional meanings attributed to these devices, her research sheds light on how gendered expectations shape the domestication of technology—and what this reveals about the persistence or evolution of family roles today. Together, the speakers invite reflection on the entanglements of automation, intimacy, and inequality in the domestic sphere.

About the contributor

Dr Lulu P. Shi

Dr Lulu P. Shi is a departmental lecturer at the Department of Education of the University of Oxford and a research associate at the Oxford Internet Institute and Sociology Department Oxford. She is a sociologist and her research spans technology, education, work and employment and organisations. Lulu leads a project funded by the British Academy, which investigates how educational technology (EdTech) transforms education. Specifically, the project studies the role of EdTech firms ­– who can be seen as the architects behind the technology – in shaping education by considering the socio-political contexts they are embedded in. She also works on the project DomesticAI at the Oxford Internet Institute. In this project she focuses on the transformation of paid and unpaid work in the age of AI and robotics. With her team she designed a cross-national harmonised factorial survey experiment.

Dr Yumiko Oda

Dr Yumiko Oda is Professor of Marketing at the Faculty of Commerce, Nagoya University of Commerce and Business. She received her PhD in commerce from Hitotsubashi University, where she also served as an adjunct lecturer. Before entering academia, she worked at companies including Canon, Dow Jones and Dream Incubator. Her research focuses on consumer culture, with particular interest in how emerging technologies influence domestic life, gender roles, and care. She uses qualitative and interpretive methods to explore how technologies are experienced and negotiated in everyday life. In 2024, she received the Best Paper Award from the Japan Association for Consumer Studies for her work on human–technology relationships. Her research shows how automation becomes part of daily routines—not just as a tool, but as something people interact with and assign meaning to.