Theory and Practice in Playing for Transformation

Sarah Lynne Bowman is a scholar, game designer, and event organizer. She received her B.A. and M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin in Radio-Television- Film and her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Dallas in Arts and Humanities. Bowman has taught in the Humanities, English, and Communication. Currently, she is an Associate Professor in Game Design at Uppsala University Campus Gotland. She formerly served as Coordinator for the Peace & Conflict Studies program at Austin Community College, where she teaches Humanities. Bowman is a founding member of the Transformative Play Initiative, who research analog role-playing games as vehicles for personal and social change. She co-edited The Wyrd Con Companion Book (2012-2015) and currently edits for the International Journal of Role-Playing and Nordiclarp.org. Bowman has co-organized several conferences, including Living Games (2014, 2016, 2018), Role-playing and Simulation and Education (2016, 2018), and the Transformative Play Initiative Seminar (2022). More information at sarahlynnebowman.com.

Kjell Hedgard Hugaas is a Northern Norwegian game designer, organizer, writer, theorist, and trained actor. In particular, he is engaged within the Nordic larp tradition, where he has been active for a bit over two decades. For the last few years, he has explored the transformative potential of games, and has proposed specific intentional game design practices that facilitate transformative effects. As well as being a founding member of the Transformative Play Initiative, Hugaas has theorized how ideas impact players through the processes of memetic bleed, procedural bleed, and identity bleed. His work on bleed has so far culminated in his 2022 Master’s thesis in Game Design at Uppsala University, and he is planning to expand on this theoretical work in the future. In 2023, he completed a second thesis for UU on the impacts of larp on participants’ attitudes and anxieties around death. He works as a project assistant on EDGE, the Erasmus+ Cooperation Partnership ROCKET, and the Horizon Europe Larpocracy project through LARPifiers. Hugaas is the co-founder and CEO of the game studio and research company Evocative Games AB, where he currently works as a consultant, researcher, narrative designer, and writer, including for the Erasmus+ Dystolarp project

Guus van Tilborg is a Ph.D. student at Groningen University. Originally from the Netherlands, he recently graduated with a Master’s degree in Game Design from Uppsala University Campus Gotland. Guus received an M.A. in History (American Studies), an M.S. in Social-Cultural Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam, and a Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Besides his academic pursuits, Guus has been actively teaching in various settings, ranging from language tutoring college students to teaching immigrants civics and history. Throughout his career, the central theme has been “belongingness” and how to make people feel welcomed and accepted: a theme that also happens to be his main research interest. Guus is a volunteer with Erasmus+ EDGE.

 Simon Brind is a larp writer and academic from London, England. He received his Bachelor’s degree in English Literature from University College London, has a Master’s degree in Software Engineering from the University of Westminster, and a second Master’s in Creative Writing from Middlesex University. He completed his Ph.D. in 2023 at the Digital Cultures Research Centre at the University of the West of England. His thesis, Combat Narratology: Strategies for the Resolution of Narrative Crisis in Participatory Fiction, is available from the Digital Cultures Research Centre, (UWE), Bristol. His research looks at emergent narrative structures in participatory fiction and the tension between authorial and participant agency. He has been a larper since 1983, a larpwright since 1986, and is a founding member of Avalon Larp Studio. He has worked on some of the largest and longest running larp systems in the UK as well as projects across Europe and North America.

Alessandro Giovannucci is an award-winning game designer and theorist working in the field of larp and immersive experience. He co-founded the larp collective Chaos League in 1992 and wrote the manifesto “Southern Way – New Italian Larp.” His work focuses on political and social topics, experienced through the participatory nature of larp. He has worked on different formats and styles of games, going from small ones (First They Came) to some of the bigger and most successful international larps (Sahara Expedition, Miskatonic University). Very active in the field of online larp, he designed games and organized several online festivals in the last years including the International Larp Festival. Alessandro is also regularly invited to host talks, larp design workshops and seminars all over Europe and their games are hosted in some of the most important festivals. Has already participated, both as a partner and leader, in European funded projects related to larp, civil rights and education. Alessandro is also a music teacher at the University of Teramo and University of Chieti, researching the relationship between materialism and storytelling in the arts.

Nikola Sekulić is a career athlete, martial artist, stuntman, HEMA scholar, and instructor, as well as a larp and game designer. Throughout his athletic career he has achieved numerous medals and recognitions through various sports such as Judo, Gymnastics, Parkour, HEMA, etc. He specializes in biomechanics, kinesiology, kinetics, locomotion and sports psychology. He has worked in several Erasmus+ projects and is a member of the LARPifiers non-profit organization. Sekulić has been a larper since 2016 and has attended a great number of larps as well as helping establish, edit, and run several game settings and rulesets throughout Balkan larp communities. He likes to focus on bodily self expression, body positivity, self-improvement, nurture, and growth through body movement. He hopes to spread positive athletic values in a friendly way to others through nonformal education.

Josephine Rydberg is a Ph.D. candidate at Stockholm University of the Arts (SKH). The research project Dramaturgy for Participatory Practices is explored using examples from larp and social VR. Her focus is on designing play for avatars and finding best practices for adapting larp designs to a virtual environment. Rydberg has held a position as a crossmedia developer for the County Council of Gävleborg (Region Gävleborg) since 2014, and has developed a number of innovative projects mixing storytelling and new technology. Current projects include: VR & World Heritage, Games Culture, and the Storytech conference. Rydberg has been a larper since the early ‘90s and was one of the founding members of Gothenberg’s first larp society. She holds an M.A. in Film & Theatre from the University of Sheffield and M.A.s in film production from the University of Gothenburg (Filmhögskolan, Göteborgs Universitet) and Stockholm Academy of the Arts (Dramatiska Institutet).