Can Virtual Reality Help People Understand Genocide? A Study from Iraq

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This research emerged from a collaboration rooted in the EMOTIVE project. Dr. Rozhen Mohammed-Amin first came to Glasgow in autumn 2018 on a Nahrein Network postdoctoral scholarship, working with us on EMOTIVE and offering valuable contributions and perspectives from her experience in Iraqi Kurdistan and her doctoral research in Canada. During COVID, when Rozhen was developing the evaluation strategy for "Nobody's Listening"—a VR experience developed by Ryan d'Souza with Yazidi genocide survivors and humanitarian organisations to document the Yazidi genocide—she asked me and Dr. Akrivi Katifori from the ATHENA Research Centre (an EMOTIVE partner) to help train her team in Kurdistan online on evaluation methodologies. Together we discussed how to best organise this project, adapting frameworks we'd developed for heritage storytelling to an entirely different context. The project challenged me to take evaluation approaches I'd refined through EMOTIVE and apply them to recent genocide rather than ancient history. Historical empathy theory—which I'd used for Roman Scotland at The Hunterian—took on new urgency when assessing experiences of trauma that remained raw and unresolved. The body mapping techniques we'd adapted from Professor Matthew Reason's performance studies work revealed participants literally feeling the experience in their hearts and chests, their feet unable to find ground, their hands shivering. Working with Rozhen's interdisciplinary team across Iraq—including researchers from the Cultural Heritage Organisation, University of Sulaimani, and University College London—taught me how evaluation methods must themselves be culturally responsive. An especially rewarding aspect was mentoring early career Iraqi researchers through the publication process, supporting them in developing skills in systematic evaluation, mixed-methods research design, and academic writing. Our data collectors conducted sessions in Kurdish, Arabic, and English across five cities. They navigated not just language differences but deeply sensitive emotional terrain, supporting participants who cried, trembled, or needed to pause the experience. What struck me most was how participants' own trauma histories mediated their responses. Kurdish participants repeatedly drew parallels between Yazidi suffering and the Anfal campaigns, Halabja genocide, and 1991 displacement under Saddam's regime. This wasn't abstract empathy—it was recognition of shared patterns of persecution. One participant's comment haunts me: "What Mr. Shamo went through, I had gone through it 30 years ago and our politicians are doing it to us." VR didn't just create presence in someone else's trauma; it activated collective memory, making visible the continuities of violence across Iraq's contested history. The ethical dimensions weighed heavily throughout. Unlike my previous work evaluating museum experiences where the worst outcome might be boredom, here we risked re-traumatising participants or exploiting Yazidi suffering for research purposes. We implemented rigorous trauma-informed protocols, but I remain acutely aware of the power imbalances inherent in this work—Western academic frameworks applied to Iraqi contexts, non-Yazidi researchers evaluating experiences of Yazidi genocide, the privilege of being able to remove the VR headset and return to safety. This research also expanded my thinking about emotional engagement in heritage contexts in profound ways. The EMOTIVE project taught me that emotions can enhance learning and memory in museums. But "Nobody's Listening" showed me that in post-conflict societies, emotional engagement isn't just pedagogical—it's potentially transformative for reconciliation and justice-seeking. When 92% of participants said justice hadn't been served and many expressed intentions to advocate for Yazidis, the VR experience became more than education; it became a catalyst for potential action. The project continues to shape my thinking about my current British Academy Fellowship work on emotional engagement with museum collections and my book on emotional digital heritage. The Yazidi genocide reminds me that heritage isn't always distant or comfortable. Sometimes it's immediate, contested, and demands not just understanding but accountability and change. VR's power lies not in technological novelty but in amplifying marginalised voices and making visible what official narratives exclude. I'm grateful to Rozhen for trusting me with this work and to all the participants who shared their time, emotions, and insights. Their responses—ranging from fury at injustice to determination to advocate—remind me why rigorous evaluation matters. If immersive technologies can genuinely foster cross-community empathy and inspire action in fractured societies, we need to understand not just whether they work, but how, why, for whom, and at what cost.

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