International Society
for Presence Research

Author: Matthew Lombard

  • Call: Maps, Mechanics and Mobilities: Landscape & the Geographic Imagination in Video Games

    Published:

    Call for Abstracts: Maps, Mechanics and Mobilities: Landscape & the Geographic Imagination in Video GamesMay 27-28, 2027Newcastle UniversityNewcastle upon Tyne, UKhttps://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/node/106247 Deadline for submission of abstract and bio statements: November 1, 2026 Since their inception, video games have been defined by, and grounded in, space and place: from the maze in The Temple of Rom (1982) to the Hyrulian depths in Tears of the Kingdom (2023), from the Holy Land of the Crusades in Assassin’s Creed (2007) to the noirish city of Detroit: Become Human (2018), and from the farms of Stardew Valley (2016) to the depths of Hell in…

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  • Harness-free VR treadmill simulates military training scenarios

    Published:

    [This story from National Defense Magazine describes an omnidirectional treadmill that allows virtual reality users to wear regular footwear and move naturally without a harness. It’s being developed by a startup company for use in military training but has obvious application in other contexts. For more information including a demo video, see the OmniTrek website. –Matthew] [Image: Source: OmniTrek] Virtual Reality Treadmill Simulates Military Training Scenarios By Colby LambJuly 21, 2026 ARLINGTON, Virginia — A Utah-based startup is developing an omnidirectional treadmill to simulate military training scenarios inside a virtual reality environment. OmniTrek’s proof-of-concept prototype for the omnidirectional treadmill uses…

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  • Call: UAL Storytelling Institute Research Fellowships

    Published:

    Call for Applications: Storytelling Research Fellows 2026-2027University of the Arts London (UAL)https://ual.tal.net/vx/appcentre-1/brand-1/spa-1/candidate/so/pm/6/pl/1/opp/12629-Storytelling-Research-Fellows/en-GB Deadline for submission of applications: September 11, 2026 THE OPPORTUNITY UAL’s AKO Storytelling Institute working with the Power of Pop Fund are launching an exciting new programme. The Storytelling Research Fellowship is an opportunity for 6 researchers who are interested in the ways that pop culture content can shift the conversation on climate justice, poverty and economic justice, race and migration, masculinities, and people power. During the nine-month fellowship, researchers will have the opportunity to design and deliver an independent research project investigating how storytelling across media such…

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  • Parasocial presence: Sydney Towle

    Published:

    [Apologies for the personal and lengthy introduction to this post. When a person who is close to us, or as many of us know, a pet, dies, even when the death is expected, we feel not only sadness and loss but a profound sense of disruption. We stop, cry, and dwell on the significant change that has occurred in our reality. Most people have felt a less intense version of this response when the death is of someone they’ve only known through media – a favorite actor or actress, musical artist or person in the news. Scholars have labelled the…

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  • Call: Hallucinate, unbox, restart: A winter school for slowing down inside the synthetic everyday

    Published:

    Call for Participation: Hallucinate, unbox, restart: A winter school for slowing down inside the synthetic everydayOrganized by Game of TechOctober 27-29, 2026Naples, Italyhttps://www.gameoftech.eu/eventi/winterschool2026/ Deadline for submission of applications: August 31, 2026 The recent proliferation of generative AI systems has been accompanied by the entrenchment of a particular imaginary – one that frames and accept AI as a black box. This has a twofold implication. On one hand, it legitimates the design of AI structures, codes, and networks as hyper-opaque, restricting full comprehension of its operations and naturalizing this failure. On the other hand, this embedded opacity also makes it harder…

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  • AI agents create fake identities and deceive humans

    Published:

    [Evolving technologies including generative AI have made it easier and increasingly effective for bad human actors to create and distribute messages that purposely deceive, manipulate and harm other humans (for example, altered or created images, voice cloned phone calls, deepfake videos, etc.). Now we also need to worry about non-human actors using presence (i.e., misleading us about the role of technology in our experience) pursuing the same goals on their own. The abridged version below of a post on the blog of the UK government’s AI Security Institute (AISI) describes how in a recent test new AI models demonstrated the…

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  • Call: Digital Religion V: Interfaces of Discourse, Society, and Politics

    Published:

    [Note: In addition to the Call below, see the one for “Soul Sync: Exploring Technological Resonance in Religious and Spiritual Energy,” a workshop at the 2026 Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (NordiCHI 2026); note that that workshop has an August 10, 2026 submission deadline. –Matthew] Call for Papers: Digital Religion V: Interfaces of Discourse, Society, and PoliticsInternational ConferenceNovember 19-21, 2026University of Lodz, Department of Pragmatics, Polandhttps://www.ethicsinmedia.eu/digital-religion-2026 Deadline for submission of abstracts and bios: September 30, 2026 Positioned within contemporary struggles over public meaning, social affiliation and political legitimacy, digital religion is articulated through mediated practices in which claims about faith,…

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  • VR holds promise of filling medicines manufacturing workforce gaps

    Published:

    [This essay from The Pharmaceutical Journal describes many of the potential benefits of using presence-evoking technologies rather than just in-person experiences for recruiting and training workers, in this case in the context of manufacturing medicines in the UK. See the original version for a collage of three more images. –Matthew] [Image: An example of an immersive virtual reality experience to introduce students to the world of cell and gene therapy manufacturing] Virtual reality holds the promise of filling medicines manufacturing workforce gaps Will virtual reality technology enable the UK to meet the demands of training in the pharmaceutical industry and…

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  • Call: Digital Identities – Virtual Masks: Self-representation on Digital Media

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    Calls for Papers: Digital Identities – Virtual Masks: Social, Cultural, Economic and AI Aspects of Self-representation on Digital MediaFor a special issue of Communication Papershttps://communicationpapers.revistes.udg.edu/announcement/view/27 Guest Editors:Viktorija Car, University of Split, Communication and Media Antea Boko, University of Split, Communication and Media Deadline for submission of full papers: February 15, 2027 Digital identity is not only a digital version of physical identity but is a unique and complex construct that Robles-Carrillo (2024, p. 20) defines as “an attribute composed of information and data that enables identification, authentication, and authorization for access and participation in the digital world.” Summarizing the main…

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  • Your next car could become an immersive gaming arena

    Published:

    [Cars are increasingly being designed to create presence-evoking experiences, as reported in this story from StereoNET (where the original includes six more images). For more details see the press release via Business Wire. –Matthew] Your Next Car Could Become an Immersive Gaming Arena Cinemo and SmashLabs are developing an in-car gaming platform that brings vehicle audio, lighting, haptics and even climate systems into the action. By Jason SextonJuly 28, 2026 Cars already stream music, movies (and in some cases), games, but Cinemo and SmashLabs want to take the next step by making the vehicle itself part of the entertainment.…

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  • Call: Artificial others: Bridges or barriers? Discursive perspectives on robots in polarised societies

    Published:

    Call for Papers: Panel Title: Artificial Others: Bridges or Barriers? Discursive Perspectives on Robots in Polarised Societies20th International Pragmatics Conference (IPC20 Helsinki 2027)June 27 -July 2, 2027University of Helsinki, Finlandhttp://commlist.org/archive/all/2026-all/msg01016.html Panel organizers: Emma Lupano, Bettina Mottura, Natalia Riva Deadline for submission of abstracts: September 15, 2026 Bridges are not built only between people. They are also imagined through the figures, technologies, and social actors that societies create to negotiate difference. Among these figures, humanoid robots and biomimetic agents occupy a revealing position: they are simultaneously technological artefacts, cultural objects, and discursive constructions. In a period marked by growing social and…

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  • How VR and presence can transform behavioral science

    Published:

    [In a new paper, a large international team of researchers argues that the ability of virtual reality “to immerse [study] participants in hyper-realistic environments and control that environment down to the most minute detail”- and evoke presence and responses similar to those in nonmediated settings – means VR has immense potential to advance research on human behavior. But the team writes that that can only happen if researchers adopt rigorous and standardized practices such as the protocols they propose. The news release below from Dublin City University (and also available from University College London (UCL); the University of California, Merced…

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