The Global Goals
In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. Misha's work contributes towards the following SDG(s):
About Misha
Misha Myers is Professor of Immersive and Interactive Arts and an award‑winning researcher and practitioner pioneering the integration of immersive and locative technologies within creative arts, research and education. Her work positions immersive storytelling and design not as modes of representation, but as epistemic practices through which knowledge is produced. Across her research, she develops participatory, arts‑based methodologies that engage participants as co‑researchers and authors of their own stories, combining place‑based storytelling with mobile, locative and immersive systems. Within this framework, immersive environments function as apparatuses of knowing, enabling embodied, situated forms of knowledge that emerge through interaction between human, technological and environmental agencies. Her work demonstrates how narrative, navigation and participation operate as methods for understanding complex systems, extending beyond conventional analytical and visualisation approaches through embodied and relational inquiry.
With over 20 years’ international experience, Myers has worked across diverse cultural and disciplinary contexts to support people’s place‑making strategies, sense of belonging and adaptation to changing environments. Her practice-led research frequently combines walking, mapping and storytelling with emerging technologies, generating innovative approaches to understanding spatial, social and environmental complexity. This body of work establishes immersive storytelling as a rigorous interdisciplinary methodology that operates as an extension of scientific inquiry in contexts defined by uncertainty, where knowledge must be generated through participation, interaction and experience.
She is currently Co‑investigator on the Arts and Humanities Research Council–funded project Hitting the Ground: an international arts‑led transdisciplinary partnership to address gender‑based violence in food systems through a body/story/environment approach. Working with the University of Greenwich and community and practitioner partners across the UK, Colombia and Nigeria, this research explores how embodied and environmental storytelling can deepen understanding of gender‑based violence through women’s intersectional and lived experiences, and contribute to new approaches to prevention and systemic change.
Myers’ earlier research includes her role as Co‑investigator on the Australian Research Council project Staging Australian Women’s Lives, which examined socially engaged theatre practices and the role of performance in shaping women’s cultural and political agency. Her longstanding engagement with participatory and socially engaged practice is reflected in key projects such as way from home (2004), an award‑winning multimedia artwork co‑designed with refugee and asylum seeker support organisation Refugees First, for which she received an AOL Innovation in Community Award.
Her work has consistently explored the creative potential of emerging technologies. Early experimentation with mobile media in site-specific performance is evident in Yodel Rodeo (2004), commissioned for the Spacex/Relational Homelands exhibition. As an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) UnBox Fellow in India (2013–2014), she collaborated with NGO Digital Green and an interdisciplinary team of academics and practitioners to co‑design Bumper Crop, an innovative physical and digital game integrating gamification with farmers’ community video practices.
Her collaborative practice extends to experimental theatre and performance, where she has worked internationally with companies at the intersection of digital technology and live performance. These include a European Social Fund II–supported collaboration with WildWorks Theatre (UK), and, more recently, an interdisciplinary project in Australia with Deakin Motion Lab and Malthouse Theatre to create a game‑engine adaptation of the live immersive performance Because the Night (2022). Myers is also co‑creator of The Walking Library, an ongoing collaborative project initiated with Professor Dee Heddon in 2012, that uses walking as a performative and research practice to explore reading, place and knowledge exchange.
Across these diverse projects, Myers’ work demonstrates how immersive storytelling and design can function as a collective and situated mode of inquiry, enabling new ways of knowing that foreground embodiment, participation and relationality. Her research continues to shape interdisciplinary approaches to immersive design, creative technologies and socially engaged practice, positioning the arts as central to addressing complex global challenges.
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