Immersive Religion began as a pursuit supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities to create video resources for use in college classrooms, and has maintained that priority while expanding to embrace new digital tools of extended reality. Spearheaded by John Soboslai, the Immersive Religion team includes instructors and scholars of the academic study of religion along with digital artists and humanists.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel @ImmersiveReligion for access to all 360° videos and interviews.
We partner with religious communities around the country to record live religious practices using 360-degree videography and ambisonic sound. During post-production we add translations and transliterations, provide clarifying and contextualizing information, and incorporate graphics and images to help our users comprehension and understanding.
In addition, we hold wide-ranging interviews with religious scholars and professionals to explain the elements of the practices and how they fit within broader faith traditions. These interviews are captioned and enhanced with additional information to widen the perception of the practices beyond what users see on the screen.
As the spaces wherein these practices occur are of enormous symbolic and communal importance, we create virtual tours using 360-degree photography with embedded detailed images and informational hotspots. The data for those and all elements are derived from scholarly research undertaken by the experts of the team as well as conversations with the professionals responsible for those spaces.
The end result are discrete resource suites available to enhance teaching and learning about religious studies in reliable and immersive ways that puts users in these spaces and practices instead of encountering them statically in a textbook.
In the coming months we look to release The Archivist’s Apprentice, a fully VR educational gaming experience. Follow us for updates!
John is an Associate Professor of Religion at Montclair State University, and the founder and director of Immersive Religion. Since 2022, he has partnered with religious professionals and communities to record live rites in 360-degrees and held interviews based on these experiences. He has served as IR’s videographer, editor, interviewer, and coder, slowly bringing to life a vision of what the study of religion could be.
Curriculum Advisor
Martha is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Fullerton Community College and Immersive Religion’s primary Curriculum Advisor, developing methods of incorporating IR’s resources into lessons suitable for higher education classrooms. An expert in American religious forms, she leads IR’s efforts to create standalone religious lessons easily integrated into all sorts of classrooms.
Curriculum Advisor
Julia is adjunct faculty at Montclair State University and one of IR’s premier Curriculum Advisors. An innovative teacher blending experiential learning with student leadership and research and a member of the IR team since its inception, she is engaged in developing new varieties of lesson planning to highlight the unique benefits of these immersive resources.
Contributing Scholar
Semontee is an Assistant Teaching Professor of English and American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, College Park and an expert in American forms of Hinduism, especially domestic practices. She is a Contributing Scholar to IR, appearing in explanatory interviews regarding the celebrations of Durga puja and joining the work to change the way we teach about religion and culture.
Creative Advisor
Lauren Pond is a versatile creative producer whose work engages audiences with scholarship across multiple media and platforms. She advises on IR’s website design, multimedia production, and storytelling strategies. Lauren works as a Marketing and Communications Associate in The Ohio State University Department of Psychology and was previously the Multimedia Producer of the American Religious Sounds Project.