Professor Graeme Earl will deliver the Inaugural Lecture in Digital Humanities and Public Culture, co-hosted by the Humanities Research Centre and the Centre for Digital Humanities Research at the ANU.

Our world will soon be dominated by all-pervasive immersive technologies, the internet of things and 5g. These, together with innovative design practices, have conflated digital and physical experiences, creating environments in which collaborative imaginations form part of ambient systems, tailored to our desires and emotions.

Arguably, this presents a return to forms of liminal spatial experience and concepts of reality that are more fluid, prevalent in theories about the archaeologically, architecturally and ethnographically attested past.

This talk will consider the reciprocal relationship between the past, the experience economy and the technologies that enable it, taking as it’s case study a new project on domestic life in early modern England.

What emphasis should we place on how accurately we can inspire experiences of the real world, and recreating it’s history?

Could understanding of human experience through material culture inform the design of a post-human future?

Graeme Earl is Professor of Digital Humanities and Vice Dean (External Relations) at King's College London.