On 11 November 2022, the 6th Meeting of the Society for the Study of Social and Affective Touch took place in the Netherlands, also known as “Dutch Touch”, This year’s meeting was hosted by the University of Utrecht and brought together various designers, researchers, artist, haptic therapists and other practitioners working with touch. 

It was great to have the Dutch Touch committee together again in a physical meeting and it offered a great space for everyone to exchange updates on their recent work. Anouk Keizer (University of Utrecht) shared interesting results on her long-term survey study focused on touch needs of people, which triggered a lot of inspiring discussions between attendees.

After a delicious lunch it was time for a lab tour, we visited the Dijkerman lab and participated in some very cool demos.

Alongside the exchange of updated this year extra focus was placed on how we can initiate more collaborations withing the Dutch Touch comminute; some very nice ideas came out of these conversations which will hopefully lead to some fruitful collaborations. 

This year’s meeting was again a great success and we are looking forward to the next meet-up.