Location
Palermo
Start Date
27-6-2025 9:30 AM
End Date
27-6-2025 11:00 AM
Description
Developments in contemporary society that resulted from initial lockdown phases of the COVID-19 pandemic have continued as the world discovers new ways of living and engaging with others. The changes that disrupted social interactions around the globe impacted on spiritual and religious practices in diverse cultures. A major innovation in the pandemic was the increased use and production of virtual pilgrimage. This introduced new ritual producers to virtual pilgrimage, created new partnership opportunities, and engaged a far wider audience, creating a potentially significant cultural site of intergenerational, transnational, and multi-cultural action and exchange. Virtual pilgrimage is now a rich and creative field of innovation and study.
The authors of this paper have previously reflected on the ˜agenda’ for the study of virtual religious tourism, based on our empirical studies of virtual pilgrimage undertaken during and since the pandemic. We identified four salient thematic concerns and challenges for future research in the field from the post-Covid position: scales and communities; technologies and infrastructures; heritagisation and globalisation; and the changing dynamics of the secular/post-secular in online religious tourism.
Drawing on empirical study of more recent virtual “mega-events” 2021-2025, and debates in pilgrimage discourse, we update this agenda, considering what challenges or opportunities are presented to scholars and practitioners by “AI revolution” or the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”. These epoch defining events, characterised by the societal proliferation of automation, machine learning, data-driven decision making, and the accompanying complex modalities of the self and collective memory, hold particular and important implications for virtual pilgrimage and its study, which we set out to encourage further thought and debate.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21427/qspe-vy98
Included in
G1) Virtual Religious Tourism - An Agenda for Future Research in the "AI Revolution"
Palermo
Developments in contemporary society that resulted from initial lockdown phases of the COVID-19 pandemic have continued as the world discovers new ways of living and engaging with others. The changes that disrupted social interactions around the globe impacted on spiritual and religious practices in diverse cultures. A major innovation in the pandemic was the increased use and production of virtual pilgrimage. This introduced new ritual producers to virtual pilgrimage, created new partnership opportunities, and engaged a far wider audience, creating a potentially significant cultural site of intergenerational, transnational, and multi-cultural action and exchange. Virtual pilgrimage is now a rich and creative field of innovation and study.
The authors of this paper have previously reflected on the ˜agenda’ for the study of virtual religious tourism, based on our empirical studies of virtual pilgrimage undertaken during and since the pandemic. We identified four salient thematic concerns and challenges for future research in the field from the post-Covid position: scales and communities; technologies and infrastructures; heritagisation and globalisation; and the changing dynamics of the secular/post-secular in online religious tourism.
Drawing on empirical study of more recent virtual “mega-events” 2021-2025, and debates in pilgrimage discourse, we update this agenda, considering what challenges or opportunities are presented to scholars and practitioners by “AI revolution” or the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”. These epoch defining events, characterised by the societal proliferation of automation, machine learning, data-driven decision making, and the accompanying complex modalities of the self and collective memory, hold particular and important implications for virtual pilgrimage and its study, which we set out to encourage further thought and debate.