Students will gain skills in critically reflecting on the panel topics, explaining phenomena of online violence they witness or document, predicting new and varied forms of resistance to virtual violence and interpreting how VR might change our everyday notions of humanity and conflict.

Aside from the physical component, the BIP involves 2 student conferences in hybrid format, conceived as follow-up where students could present their research projects; as well as online lectures from lecturers in non-CIVIS partnering universities and research institutes (in Romania, Belgium, Netherlands, Nigeria).

The BIP's physical component will include 5 days of classes hosted by the Faculty of Philosophy and the Rectorate building at the University of Bucharest. 

The pshysical mobility section of the course will take place between 29 September - 3 October 2025, in Bucharest - Romania.

It will consist in face-to-face classes/ lab visits for 6h/ day (total of 30h), with a lunch break and a coffee break between the 3 daily 2h-slots) hosted by the Faculty of Philosophy and the Rectorate building at the University of Bucharest. Panels in the BIP, covered by its lecturers, will include:

• counterfactual theories of virtual reality;
• fictionalism vs. realism about virtual reality and virtual causation;
• cultural representations of violence in the 20th-21st century;
• theory of mind, empathy and social skills in virtual reality;
• empathy in virtual reality;
• virtual ecology, environmental (virtual ecology, environmental (in)justice perceived meanings: from affordances to what-might-have-beens;
• attentive evaluation: ex ante / ex post stances, insight and autobiographical memory.

The virtual part will take pace between 13 October - 7 November 2025 and consists of 45h of online events held on Fridays and weekends, between 2:00 - 6:00 PM.

Virtual events will be Participation in one student conference (necessary to pass the class) presupposes writing a presentation/final essay which abides by the requirements set above, and writing which is estimated at 25h total of individual study (writing+preparation in the library, with experiments, surveys, etc).