[Commlist] British DiGRA 2025 – conference announcement and call for papers

We are happy to announce that the British DiGRA conference for 2025 will 
take place at Birmingham City University, from 20-21 May! Hosted by the 
Game Cultures research cluster, part of the Birmingham Centre for Media 
and Cultural Research, the conference asks the question ‘What is British 
Games Research?’. Scholars from across the country are invited to 
contribute to a discussion about what kinds of games research we do in 
the UK and, by sharing their work, to help build up a picture of our 
research field. The call for papers follows…

---

*What is “British Games Research”?*

*British DiGRA annual conference, 2025*

*Host*: Game Cultures research cluster, Birmingham Centre for Media and 
Cultural Research

*Venue*: Parkside Building, Birmingham City University (and online)

*Date*: 20-21 May 2025

*Conference duration*: 2 days, 09:30-17:30

*Closing date for abstracts*: 24 January 2025

What follows will be familiar to you. British scholars have been 
consistent participants in the field of games research since its 
inception. There is an established tradition of game making across the 
nation; indeed, game development is the most widely dispersed of the 
UK’s creative industries beyond London. Our universities were early 
adopters of games into the curriculum, and we host a long-running 
national chapter of DiGRA - British DiGRA - that holds a remit to 
promote, support and develop British (digital) games research.

But hang on </record scratch/> what /is/ that? What, exactly, is 
/British/ games research?

As researchers, we often gesture towards distinct national or regional 
games research cultures, to some extent characterised by publication in 
specific journals (with, for example, /Game Studies/ having strong 
associations with Scandinavian game research traditions, /Games and 
Culture/ a North American flavour, and /GAME/ an alignment with Italian 
game studies). Researchers in Britain lack a similar venue, so how can 
we and do we imagine what “British games research” is? What are we 
about, intellectually?

Researchers have pointed to the importance of understanding games as 
both global (Kerr 2017) and local (Swalwell 2021), and recent years have 
seen increasing scholarly interest in both national and regional 
traditions in connection with games (e.g. Navarro-Remesal and 
Pérez-Latorre 2021; Švelch 2022). This has been parallelled by growing 
attention to the idea of regional/local games studies as well (e.g. 
Liboriussen and Martin 2016) but this has not yet extended to work on 
British game studies specifically.

If literature has addressed the idea of what a British game could be 
(e.g. Wade 2016; Webber 2020), we still don’t know – perhaps have not 
even thought about – what British games /research/ is. This year, the 
British DiGRA conference seeks to answer that question. We will use this 
conference as an opportunity to map and take stock of current games 
research taking place in Britain, and/or in relation to Britishness.

The conference takes place in Birmingham, the heartland of British 
cultural studies, hosted by a research centre indebted to that 
distinctive intellectual tradition, characterised by attention to 
representation, ideology, identities, and the tension between the global 
and the local. Inspired by this critical approach, we ask: what is 
distinguishable, and even distinctive, about British games research? How 
can we talk about British games research in a way that embraces the 
diversity of culture in Britain? How do constructions of Britishness 
relate to ideas of Europeanness and to the constituent countries of the 
UK? As we negotiate these questions, we want to hear what /your/ work is 
about, and what it does to shape this emerging space of scholarship.

*Submissions*:

Submissions might engage with the following themes, from the perspective 
of research happening in Britain, or in British contexts:

  * Inclusive and decolonial approaches to defining British game studies
  * Cities and the (hyper)local in British game studies
  * Government policy in/and British games research
  * Game cultures and communities: a view from Britain
  * The theoretical underpinning of British game studies
  * Game design traditions and futures in Britain
  * Global influences on British games and games research
  * Game development and creative industries discourse
  * Historicising games research: key contributions and approaches from
    Britain
  * Future directions for British games research
  * British game technologies and their impact
  * Games and AI in/and the UK
  * Applied games in British contexts
  * British art and British games
  * The rural and British games (including landscape and folk horror)
  * British narrative and hypertext
  * Digital cultural heritage in British contexts
  * Serious games and immersive experiences in British contexts

*Submissions should be made to one of two tracks: *

**

*Track 1: Defining the field*: abstracts of 200 words for 5-minute 
lightning talks about your research, helping us to build a picture of 
games research taking place in, or otherwise connected with, Britain.

*Track 2: Traditional conference papers*: abstracts of 500 words for 
20-minute paper presentations, connecting with the idea of British games 
research.

To ensure equity and access to the conference, no author may present 
more than two contributions to the conference. This includes single and 
joint-authored submissions.

*Submission link*: https://bcmcr.org/bdigra25 <https://bcmcr.org/bdigra25>

Please write everything in the form, with no attachments.

*Important dates*

*Call closes*: 24 January 2025

*Notifications of acceptance*: sent to authors by 21 March 2025

*Event schedule*

The event will run from 09:30-17:30 on both days.

*Expected registration costs***

Registration will be no more than £50 for in-person attendance for 
employed delegates. There will be a limited number of discounted tickets 
for PGR/unwaged delegates. The in-person fee covers refreshments and 
lunches on both conference days.

Online attendance will attract a fee of £10. We encourage in-person 
attendance as far as possible for delegates presenting at the conference.

---------------
The COMMLIST
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier. Please use it responsibly and wisely.
--
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit http://commlist.org/
--
Before sending a posting request, please always read the guidelines at http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ commlist.org)
URL: http://nicocarpentier.net
---------------