Castles in the Cloud: Digital Reconstruction and the Limits of the Text
Cultural Studies Salon Seminar with Katrina Keefer
Event Details
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Thursday, February 26, 2026
7:30 PM - 9:00 PM
Traill College
Building: Scott House
Room: Senior Common Room
Digitally recreating historical environments and worlds is increasingly possible with technology and advances in photogrammetry. This seminar will explore the problems and challenges posed, however, and invite discussion around methodologies for accurate reconstruction. How does one rebuild the famous Tabard Inn of Chaucer, for example, when the actual structure burned down centuries ago? How can one know what types of shirts were worn by seventeenth century workers at the Bunce Island fort? How does one even situate precolonial villages when maps might be aspirational at best? These require consideration and reflection and we will explore each in turn.
Katrina Keefer is an Adjunct Professor at Trent University, and a well-published scholar of identity and cultural history with a particular interest in how individuals situate themselves within broader communities and groups. She works both in Public History and in Game Studies, with her most recent games work dedicated to developing a culturally nuanced game set in the Sierra Leonean past. Her ongoing immersive digital experiences are intended as an engaging pedagogical tool suitable for a global audience interested in exploring a reconstructed precolonial past. She has published two books, along with multiple articles and chapters. Through her work combining game industry technologies with archival, historical, archaeological, and anthropological reconstruction, Katrina Keefer has developed approaches which harness digital tools for cultural preservation.
Contact Info
Please note the room has limited seating
This talk will not be recorded.