Immersive Realities Working Group

The Immersive Realities Working Group is currently in its incubation phase at Technical University of Munich (TUM). It is a joint initiative of the TUM Think Tank and the Professorship of Public Policy, Governance and Innovative Technologies at the School for Social Sciences and Technologies. 

The Working Group aims to investigate and shape the interactions of immersive technologies and their applications with society, politics, and the economy in the coming years. Ultimately, these efforts aim to support the development of open-and human-centric immersive technologies and realities, that encode and promote European values, facilitate knowledge sharing, and support its builders, shapers, and users.

The working group will focus on the impact of the use of immersive technologies on society and the lived experience of individuals. From the vision of a global Metaverse to countless open or closed applications of extended realities, a supposedly fragmented archipelago of applications can be fused into one common goal: to “unflatten the internet”. We will join forces with researchers from different disciplines to explore this endeavour as a critical, constructive and innovation-friendly partnership. The working group will together explore future research avenues and activities of joint interest.

Topics, activities & formats

Four types of formats will present the cornerstones of the Immersive Realities Working Group, which will be hosted by the TUM Think Tank and their partners. Members of the Working Group are welcome to participate and collaborate in organising these events. The following formats will be part of the ongoing activities: 

• Workshops, that bring together experts on a specific aspect or issue, that is currently being researched by the Immersive Realities Working Group.
• Public events to encourage discussion on immersive technologies and their impacts on society and individual realities, that are accessible to a broader audience. Example: event series with the WEF Global Shapers “Immersive Realities Chronicles”.
• Multistakeholder events to engage actors from academia, industry, public sector and international organisations in an interactive conversation and develop insights on challenges and opportunities of the new technologies from different perspectives. Example: Multistakeholder Exploratory Workshop on 28 February 2023.
• Government and policymaker engagement: Identifying needs, questions and challenges from policy makers to support informed decision making related to applications of extended reality like the Metaverse. Our working group will work on governance-related challenges to support policy makers.

Research, Projects & Outputs

The second pillar of the Immersive Realities Working Group will be joint research projects and the creation of other collaborative outputs of interest (such as teaching formats, workshops, OpEd’s, etc.). 

Additional Efforts & Teaching

Members of the Immersive Realities Working Group might decide to collaborate on further projects related to the topic of this group, for example in teaching and co-supervision. An example for this could be the previous ‘Metaverse’ Reading Group, which was a course offered at the Department for Governance in the fall semester 2022/23.