DRIVEN · Digital avatars, Religion and embodiment: exploring presence, Identity and materiality of religious practices in immersive Virtual Environments

DRIVEN analyzes the process of avatar embodiment and its role in the expression and practice of religion in immersive virtual environments. Considering religion as an embodied experience, this project aims to provide a fresh understanding of digital embodiment, its potentialities for the construction of religious identity, and how avatar-driven rituals enable religion's material dimension to be ethically manifested online. This will be done by combining phenomenological and posthuman philosophies, media and religious studies, cultural anthropology, and gender perspectives with a) thematic interviews and b) participant observation with unstructured interviews. Recent studies have proposed avatars as extended virtual representations allowing creative manifestations of identity or as devices of digital embodiment capable of affecting the user’s physical offline condition; however, none of them have contemplated religion as a research context. Also, scholars on digital religion have provided valuable insights on the material potentialities of digital media for the development of ‘lived’ religion (mainly after COVID-19), but none of these studies have included virtual avatars in immersive environments. DRIVEN will explore and analyze users’ avatars in selected digital games and social VR platforms where avatar presence and agency are most marked. The project will focus on Christianity and Neopaganism, two religious identities that make it possible to observe how users respond to the digital space in different ways according to their religious backgrounds. By exploring the avatar, the avatar-user relationships, and religious performances driven by avatars, DRIVEN will shed new light on the nature of digital religious practices and how the study of virtual avatars can bring alternative developments on aspects like experiential authenticity, religious freedom, disability, and gender representation, as well as the creation of ethical VR spaces for religious pursuits.