The School of Arts and Creative Industries and the Special Collections team will be hosting a reception and lecture at Edinburgh Napier University on Remembrance Day.  The event will feature a lecture by Stefan Manz, Professor of Global History at Aston University Birmingham, Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Research Associate at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. Professor Manz and co-presenter Paul Long, CEO and Creative Director of MBD Ltd, will introduce a heritage project - South Africa World War One - which reinvents commemoration of the First World War for the digital age by creating joint, non-hierarchical, and decolonised memory spaces. Lecture participants will have the opportunity to inspect the materials and watch the two virtual reality experiences on VR headsets.

For the war poets, the literary genre of the poem was the preferred format to relate their first-hand experiences to their readers. Fast forward 110 years, and we find ourselves in a very different world where new technologies, social issues, and global connections require new approaches to constructing the memory of the First World War. This lecture will introduce a heritage project which reinvents commemoration of the First World War for the digital age. It was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and co-created by Aston University Birmingham, KwaZulu-Natal Museum in South Africa, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and MBD Ltd Creative Digital Storytelling in Leicester. Outputs consist of two Virtual Reality Experiences, a digital heritage app, an exhibition, and an education resource for South African schools.

Since 1918, commemoration of the Great War has been contested in South Africa, reflecting socio-political divisions and ongoing inequalities. Official ceremonies and monuments have long focused on white soldiers rather than black and coloured labourers participating in the war. The project addresses this imbalance by creating joint, non-hierarchical, and decolonised memory spaces. Lecture participants will have the opportunity to inspect the materials and watch the two virtual reality experiences on VR headsets. They will gain insight into the collaboration processes between digital creatives, historians, and heritage professionals in constructing historical memory for the 21^st century. Does immersion through virtual reality lead to a more empathetic understanding of historical pasts than non-immersive texts or films?

If you want to familiarise yourself with the project ahead of the lecture you are welcome to visit South Africa WW1. This gives you access to the two virtual reality experiences which you can watch on your computer, on your mobile phone, or on a VR headset (if you have one).

The reception will be held at the War Poets Collection at the University’s Craiglockhart Campus, beginning at 5:30pm followed by a lecture at 6.15pm. The lecture will be held in The Rivers Suite, named after W.H.R. Rivers, the pioneering psychiatrist who worked at Craiglockhart Hospital where poet Siegfried Sassoon was treated and convalesced.

Professor's Manz publications include Enemies in the Empire. Civilian Internment in the British Empire During the First World War (Oxford University Press, 2020), Constructing a German Diaspora and The ‘Greater German Empire’, 1871-1914 (Routledge, 2014). His exhibitions and digital projects have been shown in the UK, Ireland, the United States, Canada, South Africa, and Barbados.