Transformative Play Research Series

The Transformative Play Research Series features monographs, anthologies, editions, and translations that investigate the potential of play and games to have lasting impacts on their participants. This interdisciplinary series explores analog, digital, and hybrid forms of game play from a variety of different perspectives, including artistic research, design-based research, psychology, sociology, anthropology, counseling, pedagogy, didactics, theatre, media studies, gender studies, critical theory, cultural studies, and others. We also welcome work from fields who research social marginalization, such as gender, sexuality, disability, class, and appearance-based discrimination. The Series aims to provide a centralized hub for cutting-edge academic and popular scientific publications that weave together theory and practice in productive dialogue. Skill training of various sorts is emphasized, including play and games that positively influence cognitive, affective, and behavioral development. The Series also explores potential negative impacts of play, such as reactionary or antisocial behavior within gaming communities. An area of special interest is analog role-playing games as vehicles for progressive personal and social change in leisure, therapeutic, and educational environments. 

The series is similar in focus to the International Journal of Role-playing also placed at the Department of Game Design with the same editorial board. It has a wider scope in terms types of games, while the emphasis on transformative play is a narrower scope.

Editor:
Sarah Lynne Bowman, Ph.D. Senior Lecturer at the Department of Game Design, Uppsala University