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R. Scott Wilson
Chair, Department of Anthropology CSU Long Beach

R. Scott Wilson, PhD. Is Chair of the Anthropology Department at California State University, Long Beach. His graduate training at Stanford University focused on how minority ethnographic filmmakers negotiated race, nationalism and political discourse in Taipei, Taiwan in the late 1990s. As his teaching and research interests developed, he became acutely aware of the limitations of traditional modes of ethnographic film and photography. Since 2005 he has been exploring the use of augmented and virtual reality technologies for ethnographic representation. Students in his New Media Ethnography course explore the storytelling potential of various XR platforms, collaborating to author interactive ethnographic texts, location-based immersive games, and reality-based VR experiences and simulations. His own works include academic articles on emotional immersion in documentary VR, as well as two 360/VR films, Birthplace of the People: A Tongva Origin Story and The Body of Prix.