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International Day of Women and Girls in Science
Game in Lab celebrated its female researchers during the International Day of Women and Girls in Science which was created in 2015 by UNESCO. With the adoption of Resolution 70/212 by the United Nations General Assembly, the organization committed to promoting access to, and equitable participation in, science for women and girls. On this important day, Game in Lab shines a spotlight on its female researchers.
Supporting women in science
Since 2018, Game in Lab has been encouraging and supporting board games research, welcoming doctoral students under a CIFRE contract, and financing international research projects on board games. According to UNESCO, only 33% of researchers worldwide are women currently, showing just how much work still needs to be done to address inequalities in research and the sciences. Game in Lab wants to support this effort by seeking parity when selecting academic projects to support. Forty-five percent of the researchers supported by the program are women.
Elsa Brais, Gray Atherton, Melissa Rogerson, Chloé Germaine, Anick Pelletier, Léa Martinez, Ariela Holanda, Marion Sourd, Rebecca Sayeck, Gabrielle Trépanier Jobin and Vinciane Zabban: Game in Lab is proud to honor all these women of science on February 11 every year.
Two female researchers in the spotlight
Among our researchers, Chloé Germaine (PhD and Co-Director of Manchester Game Centre at Manchester Metropolitan University), and Vinciane Zabban (Lecturer at the EXPERICE laboratory at University Sorbonne Paris Nord) study analog games and their role in supporting social transformation, and video game designers, production and practices, respectively.
Chloé Germaine
Chloé Germaine is a researcher and reader at the English Department at Manchester Metropolitan University. She is also co-director of the Manchester Game Centre, a research group that explores the role of games in society. Chloé is also chair of the Game in Lab scientific committee and works with the team to develop their call for projects and evaluate new projects. Her research focuses on the role of games in climate change. Her project, “Play and the Environment: Games Imagining the Future“ (2021-2022), used participatory action research methods to study how board games could be used to help young people communicate their ideas about the future of climate change. Through this work, she developed a research methodology called “hacking” to examine how games communicate and function as cultural actors.
The method is described in the book Ecogames: Playful Perspectives on the Climate Crisis. Chloé also leads research activities on the Horizon Europe/UKRI-funded project, STRATEGIES: Sustainable Transition for Europe’s Game Industries. This scientific research program will help Europe’s gaming industries realize their potential as drivers of sustainable innovation.
Chloé Germaine also designs table-top role-playing games, specializing in Gothic horror games. Her most recent project in this field is Rooted in Crisis, a collection of scenarios co-authored with climatologists that aims to raise awareness among a variety of audiences about the emotional dimensions and consequences of climate change.
Vinciane Zabban
Vinciane Zabban is a Lecturer in Sociology at University Sorbonne Paris Nord, at the EXPERICE laboratory, a pioneer in game science. She has also been a member of the Scientific Committee of Game in Lab since its creation.
For the past 20 years or so, she has actively contributed to making games a research object for sociology, focusing on how gaming practices have evolved in our digital environments, but also on how games are designed, and the trajectories of their creators.
She is interested especially in the ongoing transformations of the board game environment and its professionals.
Following an investigation into the phenomenon of crowdfunding that led to an article published in the journal Sciences du jeu, she currently leads a research project funded by LabEx ICCA on the rise of prototyping practices, in particular around professional events.
We hope to see you next year to discover new female researchers!