Curriculum Vitae

Irene Valori has expertise in Developmental and Clinical Psychology. She completed her masters’ and doctoral studies at the University of Padova, Italy, delving into perceptual, motor, and cognitive aspects of humans’ interaction with virtual environments. Her previous work focused on the potential of VR to promote child development and support individuals with neurodevelopmental conditions such as Autism and ADHD. She joins the Chair of Acoustic and Haptic Engineering at the Technische Univeristät Dresden, and contributes to CeTI research. Specifically, she investigates the role of affective touch in promoting interpersonal trust in technology-mediated human-to-human exchanges or human-machine interactions. Her research aims to explore individual differences in tactile emotional vocabulary (how do people use and perceive touch that conveys different emotional meanings?), with a focus on differences related to developmental trajectories, culture, and gender.

Projects/co-operation within CeTI you are already involved in:
Touch & Trust

What is your research interest?

Multisensory integration, affective touch, social cognition, child development, VR, robotics

What do you find particularly interesting about CeTI?

The opportunity to be part of a multidisciplinary team that values collaboration and the exchange of ideas, skills, and perspectives. The opportunity to help bring the ‘human in the loop’ and drive technological innovation to meet people’s needs. The chance to do research on affective touch, which is a fundamental component of human social exchanges, and a missing piece in the development of communication technologies.

How do you spend your free time?

Hiking with my fiancé and our dog.

Publications

1.

Letizia Della Longa; Irene Valori; Francesco Rizzi; Irene Guglielminetti; Merle T. Fairhurst; Gustavo Marfia; Teresa Farroni

Social exclusion in virtual reality: Touch modulates physiological markers of self-regulation (Journal Article)

In: Heliyon, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. e44373:1–17, 2026.

(Links | BibTeX)

2.

Irene Valori; Jasmin L. Merkel; Giovanna Furlan; Tobias Grossmann; Merle T. Fairhurst

Touch facilitates newborns’ self-regulation: Systematic review of multidimensional arousal outcomes (Journal Article)

In: Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, vol. 178, pp. 106353:1–21, 2025.

(Links | BibTeX)

3.

Wenhan Sun; Domna Banakou; Justyna Świdrak; Irene Valori; Mel Slater; Merle T. Fairhurst

Multisensory experiences of affective touch in virtual reality enhance engagement, body ownership, pleasantness, and arousal modulation (Journal Article)

In: Virtual Reality, vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 162:1–16, 2024.

(Links | BibTeX)

4.

Irene Valori; Merel M. Jung; Merle T. Fairhurst

Social touch to build trust: A systematic review of technology-mediated and unmediated interactions (Journal Article)

In: Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 153, pp. 108121:1–13, 2024.

(Links | BibTeX)

5.

Irene Valori; Yichen Fan; Merel M. Jung; Merle T. Fairhurst

Propensity to trust shapes perceptions of comforting touch between trustworthy human and robot partners (Journal Article)

In: Scientific Reports, vol. 14, pp. 6747:1–15, 2024.

(Links | BibTeX)

6.

Merle T. Fairhurst; Irene Valori

A functional framework for multisensory and interactive mediated social touch experiences (Proceedings Article)

In: Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Interactive Media Experiences Workshops (IMXw), 2023, (keynote).

(Links | BibTeX)