Dr Laia Tost and I have had our Presence 2007 paper accepted for the International Journal of Heritage Studies. The paper is entitled “Evaluating Presence in Cultural Heritage Projects” and we discuss the importance of Cultural Presence as a goal and in terms of how it can or even should relate to virtual heritage projects (we discuss three we were associated with). The paper has gone through various reviews and reincarnations since the conference paper for Presence 2007.

The abstract is below:

This paper surveys current notions of Social and Cultural presence as they may help the evaluation of cultural heritage projects. We argue that cultural heritage requires specialized evaluation, as key issues both connect and separate the aims of Presence researchers and cultural heritage experts. To support this argument, three case studies of virtual heritage evaluations are summarized, and recommendations made as to how experimental design and evaluation may be improved for future projects.