International Society
for Presence Research

Author: Matthew Lombard

  • Charter school buys humanoid robots to help students learn

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    [In what is apparently a world first, a charter school in San Diego, California has purchased two AI-powered humanoid robots to interact with students. It’s “part of a pilot program meant to help [the educators] figure out what role AI – and potentially robots – may play in the future of education.” Of course there are some serious concerns about the effort, including the priorities represented by the high cost of the robots and fears about the possibility of technology being used to replace human teachers. This report from Voice of San Diego describes the early days of the program…

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  • Call: avataResponsibility 2026

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    Call for Abstracts: avataResponsibility 2026Virtues without borders: humans, avatars and collective agentsOctober 8-9, 2026Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest, Romaniahttps://avataresponsibility.ccea.ro/virtues-without-borders-humans-avatars-and-collective-agents/ Deadline for submission of abstracts and bio statements: July 27, 2026 Alongside the growing complexity of collective agents such as organizations, groundbreaking developments in AI and robotics are reshaping our moral landscape in profound and unprecedented ways. With LLM-powered avatars, AI companions, and hybrid human-AI assemblages taking the scene, we are witnessing radical challenges to longstanding assumptions about the nature of agency, virtue and moral character. Can virtues such as honesty, practical wisdom, or care be attributed to artificial or…

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  • AI agents are not your “coworkers”

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    [AI companies and many organizations label and refer to AI agents not as technological tools but as “digital humans,” “employees,” or “coworkers.” As described in this story from MIT Technology Review, researchers from Boston University have found that encouraging what might be considered role-based medium-as-social-actor presence in this way leads to negative outcomes by implying that the AI has skills and responsibilities equivalent to those of humans. As the researchers write, “AI employees appear to occupy a hybrid organizational position: treated as delegated producers rather than tools, but not monitored like human subordinates.” –Matthew] [Image: Credit: Photo Illustration by Sarah…

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  • Call: Museums and Video Games. Collection, Interaction, and Playable Heritage

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    Call for Papers: Museums and Video Games. Collection, Interaction, and Playable HeritageAn issue of the journal Carte SemiotichePosted on GAMESNETWORK e-list on June 30, 2026 Edited by Matteo Bittanti and Elisabetta Modena Deadline for submission of abstracts: August 31, 2026 In 2011, artist and game designer Pippin Barr created The Artist Is Present, a video game based on Marina Abramović’s performance of the same name, originally staged in 2010 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York as part of a retrospective dedicated to the artist. Described by its creator as a lo-fi recreation of the performance, the game…

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  • How Realms of Flow explores a different side of VR

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    [This interesting story from UploadVR describes the trajectory of work by creator Marc Zimmermann, who has designed a series of presence-evoking virtual reality experiences that emphasize “mood, movement, sound, and emotional immersion rather than traditional gameplay.” To better understand what these experiences are like, see the original version of the story for six more images and two videos (and of course follow the links and try some of the experiences yourself). –Matthew] How Realms Of Flow Explores A Different Side Of VR By Craig StormJune 4, 2026 Some of the VR experiences that have stayed with me the longest haven’t…

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  • Call: Ten Years of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey: Legacy, Impact, Future

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    Call for Papers: Ten Years of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey: Legacy, Impact, Futurehttps://bristoldigitalgamelab.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/2026/06/19/call-for-papers-ten-years-of-assassins-creed-odyssey-legacy-impact-future/ Editors: Dr Richard Cole & Dr Alexander Vandewalle Deadline for submission of abstracts: August 24, 2026 In 2018, Ubisoft Quebec’s Assassin’s Creed Odyssey introduced audiences around the world to the most elaborate rendering of Ancient Greece ever produced in a video game. Featuring a heroic protagonist in the first stages of the Peloponnesian War, Odyssey allowed players to roam an expansive, open world recreation of the Greek world, to experience historical events, converse with authors, philosophers, and politicians, and to play out their own historicized fantasies in an…

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  • How VR Is changing the way Shakespeare is taught

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    [This story from the University of California, Davis includes lots of interesting comments about the principles behind the design of, and first-person reports about presence and learning from students in, a UC Davis course called “Interactive Shakespeare: From VR to AI.” See the original version for five more pictures and a 2:18 minute video (also on YouTube). For more context, see the July 2022 ISPR Presence News post ”Two forms of ‘Shakespeare Karaoke’ illustrate immersion and isolation issues in EdTech and beyond.” –Matthew] To Be or Not To Be … in Virtual Reality How VR Is Changing the Way Shakespeare…

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  • Call: Between Screens: Video Games, Film, Television and Transmedia Exchange

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    Call for Book Chapters: Between Screens: Video Games, Film, Television and Transmedia Exchangehttps://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2026/06/25/between-screens-video-games-film-television-and-transmedia-exchange Edited by Dr Michael Samuel and Dr Richard Cole Deadline for submission of abstracts and bio statements: August 7, 2026 Adaptation is a dialogic process, a creative exchange across content production and context rather than an attempt at fidelity. Recent trends in adaptation studies reflect this complexity. Videogames exist within a vast ecosystem of transmedia storytelling and experiences, yet scholarship on adaptation and video games remains limited. This collection is a response to this gap. Our aim with Between Screens is to reframe the conversation about the…

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  • Prominent people have more reason to believe we live in a simulation

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    [In a recent interview the modern philosopher who popularized the Simulation Argument (that we’re all experiencing the ultimate form of presence) commented that prominent people, especially “extreme cases” like Donald Trump and Elon Musk, have more reason to give credence to the possibility that they and we are living inside a simulation. This report from IFLScience does a nice job of summarizing the argument itself and relaying the new comments; it includes links to both the interview with Nick Bostrom and an earlier IFLScience report on whether and how we might or might not want to escape such a simulation.…

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  • Call: Retrofuturism 4.0: Materiality Online Symposium

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    [NOTE: Visit the website for this event for archives from previous symposia in the series. –Matthew] Call for Papers: Retrofuturism 4.0: MaterialityOnline SymposiumAugust 27-28, 2026https://musicalretrofuturism.wordpress.com/ Deadline for submission of abstracts: July 20, 2026 Since 2022, we have held a series of online symposia addressing ‘retrofuturism’, a term we use to denote the ways in which internet aesthetics invoke visions of utopia and nostalgia. From vaporwave and hauntology to chiptune and frutiger aero, music, sound and audiovisual media have been central to these present-day entanglements of past and future possibility. Our past symposia have looked at microgenres, nostalgia, and anemoia.…

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  • How Proximie telepresence is transforming surgery, maternal care in Kenya

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    [A growing network of hospitals in Kenya are using the Proximie telepresence system to improve obstetric surgical care, as reported in this story from Health Business (the original version includes a second picture). For more information and context, see an April 2021 ISPR Presence News post and the Proximie website (and specifically the August 2022 blog post “The Obstetric Safe Surgery (OSS) Program in Kenya: Co-designing surgical training and mentoring programmes with local teams”). –Matthew] Inside Proximie: How telepresence is transforming surgery and maternal care in Kenya By Pauline Achieng TomJune 3, 2026 In Kibwezi Makueni County, a mother suffers…

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  • Call: “Play, Games, and Sociality” for Studies in Symbolic Interaction

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    Call for Manuscripts: Play, Games, and SocialityFor the journal Studies in Symbolic InteractionJournal: https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/book-series/studies-symbolic-interactionPosted on the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) e-list on June 25, 2026 Deadline for submission of abstracts: September 1, 2026 G.H. Mead discussed his well-known versions of play and the game in the context of development, as necessary activities regarding the pragmatic and empathic orientations of the self to others. However, his notion of sociality, which delves into the temporal connection between past, present, and future, is connected to the importance of emergence and novelty. Implicitly, Mead’s notion of sociality accentuates the importance of play and…

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