Lisa Burghardt is a PhD candidate in the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University and part of the NWO funded project "Virtual Reality as Empathy Machine: Media, Migration and the Humanitarian Predicament".

VR has often been promoted as an “empathy machine,” but rather than asking whether VR generates empathy or not, my research aims to understand how it mediates relations, ethico-political tensions, and emotions in concrete contexts. My research traces how different actors—such as creators, curators, and audiences—practice care through and around VR, and how these practices are shaped by both human and material agencies. I take an ethnographic approach to explore how VR is embedded in social practices, focusing in particular on the role of affect and care.

By bringing together insights from Feminist Science and Technology Studies, Postcolonial theories and media studies , I aim to rethink humanitarian VR. Through this, my work contributes to broader conversations about media, technology, and care.