Author: Matthew Lombard


  • Call: International Communication Association (ICA)

    [NOTE: Visit the link directly below for detailed Calls for this conference in 37 submission categories based on the organization’s divisions and interest groups. This post contains highlights from Calls for categories particularly related to presence. –Matthew] Call for Papers: ICA 202777th Annual Conference of the International Communication AssociationJune 3-7, 2027Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdomhttps://www.icahdq.org/mpage/ICA27-calls-for-papers Deadline for submissions: November 2, 2027 at 12:00 Noon Eastern Daylight Time Why Attend ICA27? The Annual International Communication Association (ICA) Conference is one of the biggest global gatherings for communication scholars, practitioners, and students. Cutting-Edge Research: Hear the latest findings before they’re published, across every…

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  • US Air Force Airlift Group uses VR to train maintainers

    [This story from the United States Air Force News Service highlights the monetary and other benefits of using “realistic” and “immersive” presence-evoking virtual reality to train people for the challenging and high stakes work of maintaining aircraft. See the original version of the story for a second image. –Matthew] [Image: U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Austin Malanowski, 913th Airlift Group Virtual Reality Training Center program coordinator, (right), guides Tech. Sgt. Tisha Martin, 913th AG paralegal, through a virtual training environment during the May Unit Training Assembly at Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas, May 3, 2026. Malanowski spearheaded the transformation…

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  • Call: Intl. Seminar on the Public Sphere in the Age of Algorithms

    Call for Abstracts: II EPEA: International Seminar on the Public Sphere in the Age of AlgorithmsUnder the theme: Artificial Intelligence and Political CommunicationOrganized by the Media Studies Group at LabCom – the Communication Laboratory of the University of Beira Interior (UBI) in Covilhã, PortugalDecember 10-11, 2026Onlinehttps://labcom.ubi.pt/epea/ Deadline for submission of abstracts: September 30, 2026 OVERVIEW The rapid popularisation of generative artificial intelligence through easily accessible platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude has introduced challenges related to the automated production of content, the authenticity of information, the concentration of technological power, and transformations in communicative practices.…

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  • Tess McKinney helps healthcare and education embrace immersive technology

    [Those interested in presence-evoking technologies and their impacts should know about Tess McKinney and the work she does to “[help] hospitals, colleges, and universities adopt virtual reality, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and other immersive technologies.” This news release about her is from the Nebraska Business Development Center; for more information visit the website of her company XRenegades. –Matthew] Building the Future Through Virtual Reality XRenegades Helps Healthcare and Education Embrace Immersive Technology August 28, 2026Contact: NBDC Communications – [email protected] Tess McKinney was sitting in a national conference session on virtual reality in 2019 when she heard something that didn’t sit…

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  • Call: Focus on Pedagogy 2026: Across Teaching, Theory, Technologies & Times

    Call for Abstracts: Learning & Teaching ConferenceA Focus on Pedagogy 2026Across Teaching, Theory, Technologies & TimesNovember 18-20, 2026Onlinehttps://amps-research.com/conference/learning-teaching/ Deadline for submission of abstracts: October 10, 2026 Education can be seen as a practice in constant flux. Today, AI is transforming how we teach and learn. A few years ago, it was online teaching that reshaped classrooms worldwide. Before that, social justice movements were shifting our focus away from the ‘canon’ and, for several decades now, new theories like transformative learning and connectivism have been reshaping our roles as teachers. Teaching and learning then, are clearly phenomena in continual evolution.…

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  • Lessons from a viral fake sorority hopeful’s TikTok videos

    [An AI expert at a venture capital firm recently created a series of videos in which a fictional college student competed with her peers to join different sororities at the University of Alabama. The fact that the student and the videos were all AI creations was only revealed in the last video. This interview from Inc. with the creator of what became a viral experiment reveals some interesting assessments and predictions about how people respond to attempts to create presence misperceptions about the use of this fast-evolving technology (see in particular the last two paragraphs).  –Matthew] A Fake Sorority Hopeful…

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  • Job: Faculty in Human Comm. and Tech. at U. of IL at Urbana-Champaign

    Call for Applications: Human Communication and TechnologyAssistant Professor/Associate ProfessorDepartment of CommunicationCollege of Liberal Arts & SciencesUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignUrbana, IL, UShttps://illinois.csod.com/ux/ats/careersite/1/home/requisition/17566?c=illinois Deadline for submission of applications: September 15, 2026 The Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign seeks a nine-month full-time Assistant Professor or Associate Professor in the area of Human Communication and Technology with an emphasis that connects with our departmental strengths in health, interpersonal, or organizational communication. Research and teaching should focus on technologies used in communication between or among people. Specific research foci may include the implications and usage of AI in interpersonal…

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  • To get AR beyond ‘pervert glasses’ companies should remember lessons of VR

    [The author of this essay from CNET argues that Meta and other companies that make and market smart glasses should learn lessons from the long history of attempts to encourage consumers to use and purchase virtual reality headsets. As with VR, companies need to give potential adopters of smart glasses opportunities to gain experience with the product and help establish a social contract with them about how and where to use the technology. As he notes (in the second-to-last paragraph), these steps to counter the current backlash against ‘pervert glasses’ are important because of the many “possibilities of assistive wearable…

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  • Call: Human-Agent Synergy in Modern Video Games

    Call for Chapters: Human-Agent Synergy in Modern Video GamesIGI Global Scientific Publishinghttps://www.igi-global.com/publish/call-for-papers/call-details/10261 Editors:João Paulo Sousa, Instituto Politécnico de Bragança, PortugalRogério Tavares, Polytechnic Institute of Bragança, PortugalEmmanoel Ferreira, Fluminense Federal University, BrazilRodrigo Domingues, Federal University of Uberlândia, Brazil Deadline for submission of proposals: September 27, 2026Deadline for submission of full chapters: November 29, 2026 INTRODUCTION The video game industry and the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) are undergoing a paradigm shift. We are rapidly moving past static, reactive generative AI tools toward Agentic AI, which consists of autonomous, proactive systems capable of reasoning, planning, and executing complex workflows.…

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  • Harvard among universities using AI clones of professors

    [A new program at Harvard Business School is just one example of universities experimenting with using AI to create digital avatars that teach students and train instructors. This story from Fortune via MSN describes and considers the benefits and limitations of the Harvard effort; excerpts from an opinion essay in The College Fix that mentions and links to stories about other examples and urges universities to proceed with caution follows below. –Matthew] Harvard’s $699 startup bootcamp has professors who never sleep but that’s because they’re AI clones By Mia Osmonbekov, News FellowAugust 25, 2026 The newest Harvard Business School professor…

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  • Call: Routledge Companion to Media, Space and Place

    Call for Contributors: The Routledge Companion to Media, Space and Placehttps://www.linkedin.com/posts/kremena-dimitrova_call-for-contributors-activity-7496190428803678208-3jFm Edited by Lincoln Geraghty, Oliver Gruner and Kremena Dimitrova Deadline for expressions of interest: September 30, 2026 The Routledge Companion to Media, Space and Place situates media and how it is produced, shared and consumed in different spaces and locations. In an age where global media texts, visuals and technologies allow us access to people and places at anytime and anywhere, the collection argues that user agency and personal identity are important factors in the creation and co-creation of real and imagined places. Indeed, spaces and places are made…

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  • Interactive hand gestures for XR agents

    [This long but interesting report from Next Reality describes efforts to increase the ability of AI agents in virtual and mixed reality to use gestures as users expect (and thereby enhance presence). The challenge is “not ‘can an avatar move its arms naturally,’ which is largely solved, but ‘can an agent gesture at the right thing, at the right moment, in a way tied to the actual 3D space it shares with the user.’” See the linked sources in the report as well as the Google Research blog and a 3:26 minute CHI 2026 video presentation on YouTube for more…

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