The project, called Inspiring Women, uses Augmented Reality (AR) technology to present the stories of inspiring women in history who worked with STEM.

Learnovate —  which is a technology centre funded by Enterprise Ireland — funded the research project which uses actors to play the women in volograms. Volograms are full-bodied, three-dimensional holograms – which can be viewed on handheld devices in the classroom. The plan is that this futuristic view of career women of the past will be used for secondary school students to learn about inspiring women in history.

In the volograms, the role models outline to students the way they lived, the work they undertook, the contribution they made to society and how they overcame gender stereotyping to pursue an education and/or career.

The actor is filmed in such a way that the finished simulation can be seen from any viewpoint, enabling students to walk around the vologram and see it from different perspectives.

Inspiring Women is a design-based, research project being undertaken by Linda Cardiff as part of a Doctorate in Education at Trinity. It is co-funded by Learnovate and the EU’s INVICTUS project. The technology partner to the project is Volograms, a spin-out of Trinity that simplifies the process of content creation for augmented and virtual reality.

The project received much interest from the media and was carried by a number of outlets including The Echo and Irish Tech News and, internationally, on Sky News.

Getting a story from a news pitch to being broadcast on television takes a lot of co-operation and a lot of work. But it is always worth it.

In order to make sure we had the correct technology in place and to make it as visual and relatable as possible for Sky News viewers, we worked with Learnovate, Trinity College Dublin, the staff and students at Stepaside Educate Together Secondary School and Volograms.

Effectively, as Sky News Ireland Correspondent Stephen Murphy pointed out, “3D holograms of long-dead scientists are being used to inspire a new generation of Irish women to pursue a career in the male-dominated fields of science and technology”.

Sky News filmed while the technology was being demonstrated to a class at Stepaside Educate Together Secondary School. Sky News also filmed at Volograms, where the company created a hologram of Stephen Murphy for the occasion.

The volograms also got extensive print and online media coverage and even made the media in France, where it was featured by France 24.

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