The Metaverse

With the work on the PhD and various writing projects (see below) taking up a lot of my time I haven't been doing as much work actually in the Metaverse as I'd have liked, but I'm still fitting in the odd project. This page summarises some of my current, past and hopefully future activity in this space.

The Metaverse Series

 

In Jan 2023 Prof. Maggi Savin-Baden (my collaborator on many metaverse projects) and I were appointed as series editors for Taylor & Francis' new series of books on the Metaverse - simply titled The Metaverse Series . You can find more information about the series at http://themetaverseseries.info/. The books published so far, by us and other writers are:

• The Metaverse: A Critical Introduction - by Maggi and I
• The Metaverse for Learning and Education - also by Maggi and I
• The Military Metaverse - by Andy Fawkes and I
• Cities in the Metaverse - by Andrew Hudson-Smith and colleagues at UCL's Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA)

We aim to cover both "vertical" applications areas such as learning, training, arts, digital twins, heritage, relationships etc as well as cross-cutting issues such as identity, governance, psychology, ethics etc. See the website for the up to date list of published books and what topics we're interested in, and guidance for prospective authors. If you're interested in writing a book for the series just drop me a line.

In order to support the series, and practice what we preach, we have so far created two (linked) microworlds to support the series - 3D multi-user virtual worlds you can enter directly from your browser just by clicking the links below: 

• https://framevr.io/themetaverseseries-home - for an introduction to the series and a guide through the Critical Introduction book
• https://framevr.io/militarymetaverse - for a guide to the Military Metaverse book

 

 

White Papers and eBooks

Other White Papers and eBooks by me on the Metaverse are:

• My original 10 Axioms for the Metaverse are at https://davidjhburden.medium.com/10-axioms-for-the-metaverse-26ac45c0e162 - slightly updated in the Critical Introduction book
• Our free eBook (which we did for UK MOD) on Pedagogy for Virtual Reality Training and Education
• My White Paper on Immersive Visual Analytics  - and you can see example visualisations at http://www.daden.co.uk/metaverse.html (images) and on YouTube, and there's even a presentation on our work uploaded by UK MOD at https://www.slideshare.net/MOD_CDE/pitch-7-pm-cde-fair-pitch-daden

 

My Other Metaverse Writings

In terms of other writings and presentations from me on the Metaverse:

• My ongoing thoughts in this area on Medium at https://medium.com/@davidjhburden
• My experiments in Mixed Reality as it relates to wargaming I'm documenting on Substack at https://substack.com/@urbanwargamer
• My published papers are mostly at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/David-Burden-2/research
• My commercial work through Daden is at http://www.daden.co.uk/metaverse.html, and there are a lot of videos of our Metaverse work on the Daden YouTube channels.
• A Bob Book we did that illustrates Daden's various projects in Second Life - and even my experiences in some worlds before that - is available to browser at https://www.bobbooks.co.uk/bookshop/dadens-adventures-in-second-life?uid=uipbcd0oja

 

Recent Work and Presentations

 

A recent (Oct 25) presentation by my in Second Life on learning in the metaverse is available on the Virtual Worlds Education Consortium YouTube channel.

 

And here's the BBC coverage of a project I recently (May 2025) did for Wolverhampton University training English Literature students how to build in FrameVR so they could create spaces to explore concepts and works of science fiction. Beats writing essays and far more in tune with the topic!