Category: Guest Lectures

We are delighted to announce an exciting new development at the Department of Game Design at Uppsala University Campus Gotland! The Transformative Play Initiative will create events, archives, research, and graduate programmes with an emphasis on analog role-playing games. We are specifically interested in games designed and implemented by people in helping professions who wish to use play as a vehicle for personal and social transformation.

Each month we will host 1-2 lectures, roundtables, or town hall meetings. These events take place on Tuesday evenings live on Zoom in webinar format. Lectures are one hour long on a variety of cutting edge topics from researchers and practitioners, with thirty minutes for questions at the end. Roundtables gather the lecturers together for a structured conversation. We also have Town Hall meetings as a more public discussion space, where community members can request slots for 5-10 minute lightning talks on related topics, followed by short breakout rooms for discussion.

Everything is archived on YouTube to encourage sharing and open access. Although the series focuses on analog role-playing games, the topics are broad enough to be useful to students focusing on digital games and other forms of play as well.

• Here is a link to the Event Series playlist
• Here is a link to our Facebook page where new talks are announced first
• Learn more about Transformative Play at Uppsala and join the TPI mailing list

This fall, we have the following events planned:

• “Everything is the Self: Designing Character Ensembles for Player Catharsis,” Whitney “Strix” Beltrán — July 13, 2021
• “The Personal and the Political: Playing and Designing for Transformation in Nordic Larp,” Johanna Koljonen — September 7, 2021
• “Playing for Pain: Benefits, Pitfalls, and Strategies for Role-playing Marginalized Characters,” Diana J. Leonard –September 21, 2021
• “Why Do Humans Play? Exploring the Functions, Benefits, and Meanings of (Dark) Play,” Jaakko Stenros — October 12, 2021 
• “Disrupting Monkey, Laughing Raven: The Magic of the Trickster’s Dance,” Allen Turner — October 26, 2021, 7-8:30pm CET (next week!)
• “Transformative Play Initiative Event Series Roundtable: Fall 2021,” Beltrán, Koljonen, Leonard, Stenros, and Turner — November 9, 2021, 7-8:30pm CET
• “Transformative Play Initiative Event Series Town Hall: Fall 2021,” Guests TBD — December 7, 2021, 7-8:30pm CET

We are finalizing the Spring event schedule and are looking forward to see you all at future events!

The Games & Society Lab speaker series continues!

The series invites practitioners and researchers in and around game design to present their work, thoughts, and process. In this episode, Dr. Marie Jarrell talks about embodied identification, the connection you get from controlling a game character. Can playing games change the way we see ourselves? Can it change how we see the people around us?

A total of three episodes are planned for the spring, released over the next two months.

Our Games & Society Lab is happy to announce the first episode of their new Speaker Series!

The series invites practitioners and researchers in and around game design to present their work, thoughts, and process. In this first episode, Henrike Lode talks about perseverance, experimental prototyping and some of the joys and challenges of being a game developer.

A total of three episodes are planned for the spring, released over the next two months. Subscribe to our YouTube-channel to be notified!