Dr. Glaire Anderson

A guest lecture was taught by Dr. Glaire Anderson, from the University of Edinburgh (United Kingdom), on Monday, November 6th. Dr. Anderson is a historian of art and architecture with expertise in the Middle East and North African (MENA), or alternatively, medieval Islamic (or Islamicate) societies and civilization. She is the founding leader of the Digital Lab for Islamic Visual Culture & Collections, and currently Senior Lecturer in Islamic Art at the University of Edinburgh.
In the Digital Lab for Islamic Visual Culture & Collections, Dr. Anderson leads a team of students, designers, and programers to develop game projects (such as the Digital Munya 2.0 and the Córdoba Journey) that have the potential not only to entertain players but to make substantive historical knowledge accessible to players and wide range of audiences beyond the academy. You may join the Digital Lab’s official Discord Server to share your experience and discuss more about these games with Dr. Anderson and her team.
In this guest lecture, Dr. Anderson talked about video games as a powerful educational tool, and how academics can offer ways to help developers and designers create more inclusive and authentic perceptions of the past for the players as well as the rapidly developing gaming industry. Dr. Anderson is also a consultant to Assassin’s Creed: Mirage, which is the thirteenth installment of the franchise, set in the ninth-century city of Baghdad during the Abbasid Caliphate. Players can find historical information about the history of Baghdad (including people, daily life, trade and commerce networks, built environment, literature, and science) through a variety of artifacts that were included in the game by partnering with museum collections and archives around the world. Dr. Anderson answered the questions of the students who had an opportunity to experience the game briefly at the U-M libraries’ Computer and Video Game Archive (CVGA) prior to Dr. Anderson’s guest lecture.
