Author: Silvia Rossi, Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) - The Netherlands
The 4th edition of the Spring School on Social XR organised by Distributed and Interactive Systems group (DIS) at CWI in Amsterdam took place from 20 to 23 April 2026 and attracted 31 students from various disciplines, including technology, the social sciences, and the humanities. The event was organized by Silvia Rossi, Irene Viola, Thomas Röggla, and Pablo Cesar from CWI, and Omar Niamut from TNO. Also this year, it was co-sponsored by ACM SIGMM, thanks to the founding for Special initiatives, and it has been recognised also as an ACM Europe Council Seasonal School.
Across 11 lectures (4 of them open to public) and 3 hands‑on workshops led by 12 international instructors, participants had the possibility to have cross-domain interactions on Social XR. The program covered a broad range of topics at the intersection of immersive technology, human behavior and system design: trust and safety in social virtual environments, ethical and human-centered approaches to XR design, affective computing and mental health applications, socially intelligent and AI-driven virtual humans, haptics and tactile interaction, volumetric video technologies, mobility research in XR, and the future of communications in education and research. Together, they provided a multidisciplinary perspective that went beyond knowledge transfer: bringing together early-career researchers from diverse backgrounds to create the groundwork for new collaborations and a growing community around Social XR.
List of talks and workshops:
- “The Future of Communications and Interaction” by Gül Akcaova and Mark Cole— workshop
- “Towards Ethical, Human-Centered XR Experiences: From Theory to Practice” by Katrien de Moor — workshop
- “Volumetric Video Technologies for Real-Time Immersive Communication” by Guillaume Gautier and Alexandre Mercat — workshop
- “Studying Mobility in eXtended Reality” by Yan Feng
- “A Brief History of Virtual Humans” by Marco Gillies
- “Affective Social XR and Intercorporeal Regulation: A Multi-Method Approach to Supporting Mental Health and Well-being” by Alexandra Kitson
- “Designing Inclusive XR: Experience from Day-to-Day Industrial Research” by Marta Orduna
- “Socially Intelligent Digital Humans” by Chirag Raman
- “Tactile Extended Reality: The Role of Haptics in Immersive Interactive Applications” by Maria Torres Vega
- “Trust and Safety in Social XR” by D. Yvette Wohn
- “AI-driven Animation for Virtual Humans” by Zerrin Yumak
Students during workshops
Poster presentation
Keynote Speakers and Organisers – Day 1
Keynote Speakers and Organisers – Day 2
Closing by Organisers