ILDA LADEIRA
Career category: COMPUTER SCIENCE: human-computer interaction/ virtual story-telling
Current Employment: Full-time PhD student @ UCT and a part-time high-school Computer Studies teacher.
Email address: iladeira@cs.uct.ac.za

Career History:
I was awarded the Penelope and Robert Angus Scholarship by SAWISE for Honours studies at the University of Cape Town in 2002. During my Honours I began research on the use of Virtual Reality to tell indigenous San stories. This work earned my first publication at the 2nd International Conference on Virtual Storytelling. I continued and extended this work in my Masters, placing an emphasis on creating virtual storytelling experiences that are comprehensible and foster public interest in the cultural heritage of the San. The virtual storytelling project created during my Masters has been on show at the University of Cape Town's 175 year anniversary 'Curiosity CLXXV' exhibit and for a few months in the South African Museum, Cape Town. I have also had the privilege of traveling to Belgium and London to present papers on this work. I am now starting my PhD at UCT in the same field but in a different application area, namely working with the District Six Museum in Cape Town to explore ways in which Virtual Reality technology may be used to effect storytelling and preserve the intangible cultural heritage of District Six.