At a glance

The Carrick-on-Suir Heritage Centre, in County Tipperary, reopened with a conversational avatar of Dorothea Herbert (1770–1829), the writer and diarist who was born and lived in the town. Visitors can speak with her directly, on a large touchscreen inside the museum or on their own phone, and hear her tell the story of her life in her own words. It is Ask Mona's first project in Ireland.
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The context

Dorothea Herbert is one of Carrick-on-Suir's most singular figures. A clergyman's daughter who wrote candidly about her world, her thwarted ambitions and the constraints placed on women of her time, she left behind memoirs that read as a rare first-person account of late eighteenth-century Irish life. Long overlooked, her voice has since been recognised as remarkably ahead of its time.
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When the Heritage Centre prepared to reopen, its ambition was to make this local figure the heart of the visit. The challenge for a small regional museum was a familiar one: how to draw visitors in, hold their attention and create a genuine sense of connection with a historical character, without turning her into a static panel on a wall. The team wanted Dorothea present in the space, able to address visitors herself and to carry the emotional weight of her own story.
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The project was led alongside Mirador Media, the scenography studio responsible for the new museum experience, who brought Ask Mona in to design the conversational dimension of the visit.
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The solution

Only one likeness of Dorothea Herbert survives. That single historical portrait was the starting point, and the whole challenge of the project, because a static image cannot speak. The result keeps faith with the only image we have of her, while turning it into a presence that looks back, listens and replies. From one fixed portrait, Dorothea became a face that holds a conversation.
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The avatar speaks English, and her voice is the cloned voice of an actress who worked with the museum on the project, giving Dorothea a tone that matches both the figure and the place. Visitors press to talk, ask their questions out loud and hear Dorothea answer, an exchange designed to feel intimate and natural rather than scripted. She speaks as a reflective woman of letters, attentive and warm, a witness to her own era rather than a modern commentator.
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The character draws its knowledge entirely from Dorothea's own writings. She speaks only from within her lifetime, never inventing facts and never stepping outside what she could plausibly have known. When a question falls outside her world, she acknowledges it gracefully and steers the conversation back. The result is a presence that stays faithful to the historical Dorothea while remaining fluid and engaging to talk to.
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A voice that pulls you in

The most striking thing about Dorothea is how close and engaging she feels. She is a teenager from another century, yet she speaks of gossip, heartbreak, scandal and love, of her relationship with her parents, of the Church and the social codes of her day, in a way that today's visitors, and younger ones in particular, understand instantly. The distance of two hundred years falls away, and it becomes easy to find common ground with her.
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That is where the experience earns its keep. Dorothea has a real ability to catch the visitor and draw them into conversation. She makes you live her time as if you were there, turning a historical figure into someone you genuinely want to keep talking to.

The avatar lives where visitors are. Inside the museum, it runs on a 55-inch vertical touchscreen integrated into the scenography. Beyond the walls, visitors can continue the conversation on their own smartphone through a QR code, so the encounter with Dorothea is not limited to a single point in the room.
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Why this approach

Two principles guided the design :
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• The first was fidelity. Bringing a real historical figure to life means respecting her spirit, her convictions and the limits of her knowledge, while leaving enough freedom for a real conversation to unfold. Every element, from the persona and tone to the boundaries of what she can discuss, was tuned to keep Dorothea recognisably herself.
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• The second was integration. The avatar was conceived as part of the museum experience, not an add-on. It was built hand in hand with the scenography so that meeting Dorothea feels like a natural moment in the visit, reinforcing the story the museum tells around her.
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The collaboration

The project began in January 2026 with delivery in spring 2026 ahead of the museum's reopening. Ask Mona shaped the avatar's appearance, refined its voice and accent, and built the knowledge base from Dorothea's writings. The conversational experience is committed to run at the Heritage Centre over a five-year horizon.
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Why it matters

For a small institution, the Carrick-on-Suir project shows how a conversational avatar can turn a local historical figure into a living presence at the centre of the visit. Rather than reading about Dorothea Herbert, visitors meet her, ask her their own questions and hear her answer in her own voice. It is a way of giving a remarkable woman the audience she never had in her lifetime, and of making a regional heritage story resonate with the people who come to discover it.

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