Re‐Walking Betweenness: Augmented Reality as a Pedagogy of Geo‐Historical Justice

Abstract This article proposes a pedagogical approach that mobilises AR as an apparatus within artistic practice, examining how augmented reality and hauntological walking generate embodied encounters that reconfigure spatial justice through decolonial and relational walking practices. As a settler educator and researcher, I navigate the ‘betweenness’ of Nanjing W. Road in Taiwan, the flashpoint of the 228 Incident, and Pacific Spirit Regional Park in Vancouver, through an AR approach. This inquiry demonstrates how re‐walking geo‐historical routes through AR reveals silenced histories, enabling a reflexive, justice‐oriented engagement with haunting, memory and spatial realities. Drawing on Derrida's (2006) concept of hauntology and Springgay & Truman's (2018) walking methodology, this study frames augmented reality (AR) walking as a pedagogical apparatus. Situated within an arts‐based inquiry approach (Leavy 2018), the study mobilises AR overlays of historical artefacts and narratives onto physical landscapes, transforming walking into a multi‐layered and relational learning practice. The study adopts diffractive analysis (Murris & Bozalek 2019) to examine the relations and phenomena that emerge across AR walking encounters. Findings illustrate how this AR walking practice challenges linear historical narratives and brings haunting, absence‐presence and geo‐historical entanglements into view. By mobilising these ‘ghosts’, the work fosters decolonising re‐memory and an ethical commitment to relational repair. This research highlights AR's potential to support ethical and relational pedagogical practices, creating opportunities for critical engagement with historical injustice and its ongoing reverberations.