Archives and libraries: The long goodbye? History in immersive media
Junior Professor Dr Christian Bunnenberg, Ruhr-University Bochum
Immersive media is not just a trend in the entertainment sector. Increasing emphasis is being placed on the potential of augmented reality, virtual reality and 360° film in various dissemination contexts. Virtual technologies enable a multi-sensory experience where the audience can “dive in”, giving a sense of presence and a tangible emotional proximity to the content. It offers the opportunity to experience other worlds, which holds great potential but also represents new challenges for both teachers and learners.
A hyper-real experience of time
Immersive media offerings featuring history-related content offer users a form of “time travel” to any point in time or place in the past, from a Stone Age settlement to a medieval marketplace or a Stasi prison.
The presentation by Professor Bunnenberg uses selected examples to examine this media trend from historical, theoretical and didactic perspectives and discusses whether this “time travel” can ultimately replace a trip to the archive or the library.
Christian Bunnenberg is Junior Professor for Didactics of History at the Historical Institute of the Ruhr-University Bochum and is the course director for the Master’s in Public History. After completing his teacher training studies and Master’s degree in History and German in Münster, he worked as a secondary school teacher, a research associate at the universities in Cologne and Duisburg-Essen, and as a senior researcher at the Heidelberg University of Education. His research interests cover history in immersive media, historical learning in a digital environment and 19th and 20th century history.