Glaire Anderson

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

ABOUT GLAIRE ANDERSON

Award-winning author and art/architectural historian. I help games/entertainment and GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) professionals with accurate information on art, history, and culture of historical Islamic civilisation for wide public audiences. A consulting historian and art historian on Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Mirage and its educational Codex feature (2023), my work with Ubisoft has been widely featured in the media: STV, BBC Scotland, Apollo Magazine, The Conversation, and Times Higher Education among others.The Codex feature is freely available to learners ages 12+ in Ubisoft’s Discovery Tour Medieval Baghdad app (2025). My most recent book, A Bridge to the Sky (Oxford University Press, 2024) focuses on Islamic art and science through the career of the 9th century Cordoban polymath Abbas b. Firnas.My work across video games, GLAM, and the academy is rooted in 20+ years experience as a university professor and international researcher with a longstanding practice of using game engines and immersive digital technologies for historical visualization and game development. I’m Senior Lecturer in Islamic Art at the University of Edinburgh (PhD, MIT, Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture), Founding Director and Principal Consultant of the Digital Lab for Islamic Visual Culture & Collections (DLIVCC), Deputy Director of History & Games Lab Edinburgh, and an affiliate of Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) and the UK Co-STAR network.I was an advisor to two major museum exhibitions in 2024-25: the British Museum\'s Silk Roads exhibitions and catalogue; and the San Diego Museum of Art\'s ‘Wonders of Creation: Art, Science, & Innovation in the Islamic World’. For the latter I advised on the exhibition and contributed an essay to the catalogue, on medieval Islamic intellectuals as \'makers\' of visual culture.Areas of expertise-Architecture, Art & Social History of Islamic civilization -History of medieval Islamic science/technology-Accuracy/authenticity in historical and cultural representation -Age of the Great Caliphs Al-Andalus & medieval North Africa-Digital technologies/XR for art history, cultural heritage, and historical visualization g••••••••@ed.ac.ukinfo@g••••••••@digitallabivcc.com