Virginia Tech History Lab is a living laboratory where past and present converge through immersive technology, storytelling, and transdisciplinary collaboration. Designed to dissolve the boundaries between historical research, creative expression, and digital innovation, History Lab transforms hidden narratives into sensory-rich experiences that speak directly to place, memory, and identity. Whether walking through reconstructed VR tunnels beneath World War I battlefields or standing in a projection-mapped classroom of a once-segregated school, participants engage history not as passive viewers, but as embodied co-discoverers. Each project is a dialogue between physical space and digital imagination, asking: If this place could talk, what would it say?
As part of Virginia Tech’s 150th anniversary, Visualizing Virginia Tech History brings to life forgotten chapters of the university’s past through projection mapping, extended reality, and interactive digital exhibits. This initiative, and others before it, reflect History Lab’s core mission—to dismantle barriers between disciplines, between faculty and students, and between history and the communities it touches.
Core Collaborators
David Hicks (Education/US)
Paul Quigley (History/US)
Todd Ogle (Technology-enhanced Learning/US)
Thomas Tucker (Visual Arts/US)