Announcing our New Game Worlds Cluster

We’re delighted to be launching a new CDCS Research Cluster: Game Worlds, led by Dr Tom Boylston (School of Social and Political Science) and Dr Merlin Seller (Edinburgh College of Art).

Game Worlds Cluster Image

 

The Game Worlds cluster focuses on exploring games and play in their broadest social contexts. Members include James Cook, Juli Huang, Hannah Fitzpatrick, and Jules Rawlinson.  

After having held a successful conference last autumn, Affecting Games Space, the cluster’s next event will be a joint venture with the Serious_play Collaboratory at the University of Wisconsin. The theme of the day will be mediation/playful media, as a general term to connect our interests. This could refer to the playful use of digital media, to gamified media in their various emerging forms, or more generally just to the ways in which play acts as a social mediator, making connections and boundaries.

Over the longer term the cluster hopes to host discussion groups, talks, and interdisciplinary collaborations. They want to support research into games (especially but not only digital games), but also to ask how critical playfulness might open new possibilities for research, teaching, and general intellectual conviviality. Their key aim is to build a community that is open, curious, welcoming to all, and critical of inequalities.

If you’d like to discuss potential opportunities for working with research cluster members, please get in touch.