XR has become a powerful medium for documenting, analysing, and experiencing cultural heritage. Yet heritage is not only made of objects, monuments, and reconstructed spaces - it also resides in skills, gestures, stories, soundscapes, rituals, memories, and social relationships. ARCHERIX 2027 asks how immersive technologies can connect these tangible and intangible dimensions, and how they can connect people - experts, communities, visitors, and remote collaborators - around cultural heritage.

Following the first two ARCHERIX workshops at IEEE VR 2025 and 2026, this third edition brings the discussion to Melbourne and gives particular attention to collaborative/cooperative XR, perceptual and cultural presence, and community-centred perspectives from Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific, while welcoming work from all regions and heritage contexts.

This interdisciplinary workshop brings together researchers in digital heritage, computer graphics, spatial audio, haptics, and human-computer interaction to discuss engineering and methodological strategies for designing immersive, multisensory digital heritage experiences.

While virtual heritage reconstruction research has achieved notable progress in visual fidelity, the representation of historical environments requires a holistic framework encompassing spatial acoustics, haptic materiality, and atmospheric context. Current XR pipelines often treat these modalities separately, leading to perceptual incongruence and a diminished capacity to communicate cultural heritage values and their integrity.

To foster active collaboration, the programme includes technical presentations, a hands-on demo session, and keynote presentations from leading experts in cultural heritage and indigenous knowledge systems. In doing so, the workshop seeks to facilitate a paradigm shift - moving from modality-driven XR production toward integrated, heritage-centred, and experience-orientated approaches that better address the complex, multidimensional nature of cultural heritage.

We welcome submissions of research papers presenting novel methodologies, or Position Papers presenting ongoing projects, theoretical challenges, and future directions. Papers will be selected based on the technical rigour and relevance of the work. Accepted papers will be submitted for inclusion in the IEEE Digital Library.

 WORKSHOP REGISTRATION

Registration is mandatory to attend the workshop. Registration details will be made available on the IEEE VR conference website closer to the conference date.

Topics of Interest

We solicit research papers, position papers, and case studies addressing the following themes:

• XR approaches connecting tangible and intangible cultural heritage.

• Capture, modelling, and embodied reconstructions of craft, performance, gesture, dance, ritual, oral history, and soundscapes.

• Collaborative and cooperative XR for archaeology, museums, heritage research, interpretation, education, and public engagement.

• Remote collaboration, telepresence, co-presence, and cultural presence in virtual heritage environments.

• Perception, cognition, and multisensory heritage experiences.

• Cross-cultural studies and evaluation methods for heritage appreciation, interpretation, authenticity, and sense of place.

• Participatory, community-led and Indigenous/First Nations approaches: cultural authority, respectful representation, accessibility, and inclusion.

• Virtual humans, AI agents, storytelling, and mediated interaction in heritage experiences.

• 3D capture, digital twins, photogrammetry, neural/point-based representations, and temporal or multi-state heritage representations.

• Case studies, negative results, design lessons, standards, and long-term preservation of XR heritage assets.

 CALL FOR PAPERS

All submissions must be in English and formatted as a PDF using the IEEE Computer Society VGTC format.

1. Submission Categories & Formatting

   • Research Papers (4-6 pages, excluding references): Present original, unpublished research with a focus on technical contribution.

   • Position Papers (2-4 pages, excluding references): Present preliminary work, theoretical arguments, or critical reviews.

2. Publication & Review

   • Proceedings: Accepted papers will be published in an open-access repository prior to the workshop.

   • Review Process: All submissions are reviewed by an international program committee.

3. Important Dates

   • Submission Deadline: December 7th, 2026 (AoE)

   • Notification of Acceptance: December 17th, 2026 (AoE)

   • Camera-Ready Deadline: January 7th, 2027 (AoE). Please note that this is a strict deadline.

4. How to Submit:

   • Click here to submit your paper: https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/ARCHERIX2027/

   • For instructions on how to use this form, please visit the CMT help desk.

The Microsoft CMT service was used for managing the peer-reviewing process for this conference. This service was provided for free by Microsoft and they bore all expenses, including costs for Azure cloud services as well as for software development and support.

 Workshop Organisers

Contact Information

If you have any questions about the workshop, please contact:

• General inquiries: Kevin Shedlock, kevin.shedlock@vuw.ac.nz

• Local organisation: Tom Chandler, Tom.Chandler@monash.edu

• Publications: Jacob Young, jacob.young@otago.ac.nz