Are you a PhD student or do you supervise a PhD student who you think might be interested to take part in a games research overview course? Also, feel free to distribute this invitation.
Svenska spelforskarrådet plans to organize a course aimed at bringing PhD students, from different backgrounds, who are interested in games together. Two important aims of the course are to demonstrate the broadness and interdisciplinarity of games research and start to build common grounds for game scholars in Sweden.
If you are interested to participate, please send an e-mail to per.backlund@his.se before October 4. If we have more than 8 participants we will run the course.
Course overview
Games are important in many ways. They are important cultural artefacts in their own right as well as central to many pressing societal issues, both because they are contributing to existing issues and because they might be part of meaningful interventions. Games are also a vibrant industry with segments spanning small independent developers to AAA studios. Hence, a multifaceted area of research engaging researchers from many disciplines. This PhD course is aims to create a space where game scholars from different disciplines can explore games and games research from different perspectives. This means that we will discuss contemporary perspectives of games research in an effort to bring game scholars together and to provide an opportunity for PhD students engaged in games to meet and get an overview of the broadness of the field.
Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
- Games and
- Impact on society and policy
- social movements
- activism
- social justice
- learning
- action research
- inclusion
- Game development
- Game design
- Game technologies for non-entertainment purposes
- Research methods in games
The PhD course will open with presentations from faculty working in the relevant areas, but the main part are the presentations of ongoing research work from PhD students. Each student will get feedback from a dedicated discussant based on what kind of support or help they need and what their aims are with the presented research project. In the end, the participants will work together to identify meaningful connections between the present sub-areas of games research, in order to build and strengthen a community of game researchers.
Organization
The course will be organized by researchers currently active in games research. The content is estimated to 3 credits and we will provide a certificate stating that. Communicate with your supervisor regarding how/if the course can be credited in your research education programme.
The course will start with one or two online activities in October/November. These are followed by the individual writing assignment on a topic relevant to your research project. Finally, a seminar with lectures, presentations and discussions is planned for January 8-9 in Stockholm.
Faculty:
Per Backlund (Högskolan i Skövde)
Henrik Engström (Högskolan i Skövde)
José Maria Font Fernandez (Malmö universitet)
Lissa Holloway-Attaway (Högskolan i Skövde)
Petri Lankoski (Södertörns högskola)
Patrick Prax (Uppsala universitet)
Raquel Breejon Robinson (Malmö universitet)
Rebecca Rouse (Högskolan i Skövde)
Alberto Enrique Alvarez Uribe (Malmö universitet)
Thomas Westin (Stockholms universitet)
Ulf Wilhelmsson (Högskolan i Skövde)
Veronica Sundstedt (Blekinge Tekniska Högskola)
