Religion and Technology

Virtual Reality 

From 2015-2020 I experimented with virtual reality, 360° photography, photogrammetry, and augmented reality as tools for digital research and teaching. I worked with a team of undergraduate research assistants to create immersive 360° virtual reality tours of several sacred spaces near our Lake Forest College campus and farther afield. Support for that project came from the Digital Chicago program at Lake Forest College, funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The VR tours are now hosted by the Chicago History Museum on the archived Digital Chicago site. 

 

Religion and AI

At Lake Forest College I am a Project Director for our multiyear Mellon Foundation funded grant, HUMAN (Humanities Understanding of the Machine-Assisted Nexus), an investigation of the intersections of Artificial Intelligence and the Humanities. In addition to supporting my colleagues in their work as part of the grant, I am studying the role of AI in the imagination and thought of new religious movements.