Scientific Committee

Chloé Germaine

Doctor and co-director of the Manchester Game Centre at Manchester Metropolitan University

She conducts research on analog games (including board games and roleplaying games) and their role in supporting transformative social change. She has scientific expertise in literary and cultural studies, game studies, youth studies, environmental humanities, and creative research methods.
She is co-editor of Material Game Studies: A Philosophy of Analogue Play (Bloomsbury) and the author of numerous articles and book chapters on board games, game books, and roleplaying games. She is also a game designer and has published original roleplaying games with The Gauntlet, The Between, and Cthulhu Hack.

Gray Atherton

Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology and Mental Health at the University of Plymouth

Gray Atherton is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology and Mental Health at the University of Plymouth. She is interested in understanding how neurodiverse people see the social world. Specifically, she explores individual differences in social processing and how these differences often found in autistic people also exist in the general population. She is particularly interested in understanding the strengths inherent to neurodiversity and how these strengths can be used to challenge stigma and misunderstandings about developmental conditions such as autism.
Gray also investigates anthropomorphism, or seeing the human in the non-human, and how this relates to social processing in autism. Her other research interests lie more broadly in embodied social processing, how movement can affect how we see ourselves and our social partners, and how this can be used to understand special populations. Some of her work in this area relates to modern board games and how joint action and attention during gaming can improve mental health.

Vincent Berry

Professor, University Paris Sorbonne Nord (France)

He is a member of the “Childhood leisure, games, and cultural objects” research team within the EXPERICE laboratory at the University Paris Sorbonne Nord. Part of a sociology of games and leisure, his work analyzes the evolution of practices and contemporary playful culture (toys, board games, video games, role-playing games, etc.). By paying particular attention to the notion of experience, he studies the relationships between games, leisure, and learning.

Nicolas Besombes

Doctor in Sports Sciences and Associate Member of the TEC Laboratory (body techniques and stakes) at the University of Paris

His research focuses on competitive video gaming or “e-sports”. He is particularly interested in motor involvement when practicing e-sports, the links between practice modalities and players’ aggressive behaviors, and the sociability of e-sports communities which he examines through a socio-technical analysis at the crossroads of the sociology of sport and game sciences.

Olivier Caïra

Sociologist at the Centre Pierre Naville (University of Paris Saclay) and Associate Researcher in the narratology team at the CRAL (EHESS)

His research focuses on fiction, with in-depth studies on audiovisual and simulation games. Among other titles, he published Hollywood face à la censure (CNRS Editions 2005), Jeux de rôle : les forges de la fiction (CNRS Editions 2007), and Définir la fiction (EHESS Editions 2011). His recent work focuses on the on-screen representation of extreme intelligence, anomalies in fiction, and interactive scriptwriting. He is also a board game and tabletop role-playing game author.

Manuel Gimenes

Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Université de Poitiers

Dr Manuel Gimenes’ research is in the field of cognitive psychology, with two main themes: language and play. Dr Manuel Gimenes studies the cognitive processes involved in reading activities, along with the influence of games (board games, video games) on several cognitive functions.

https://cerca.labo.univ-poitiers.fr/membres/manuel-gimenes/

Shelly Jones

PhD and English Professor at Suny Delhi

They are an English Professor at Suny Delhi, where they teach classes in mythology, literature and writing. They are an editor of Analog Game Studies and on the jury for IndieCade. Their research examines analog, digital, and role-playing games from the perspective of intersectional feminism and disability studies.

Philippe Lépinard

Lecturer in Management Sciences - Paris-Est Créteil University

After a career in the Army, Philippe Lépinard joined the University of Paris-Est Créteil (UPEC) in 2015. His research activities deal with ludopedagogy in higher education (management, project management and languages). He is the founder of the fablab GamiXlab and the head of the scientific project EdUTeam. He also participates in several professional and scientific networks, including the MACCA Management thematic research group at AIMS. Finally, he is the co-organizer of the International Game Evolution Symposium “Ludopédagogie – Esport – Management” since 2018.

Andrea Ligabue

Art Director of Play – The Game Festival, Game Expert, Lecturer in Educational Science and member of the scientific committee of Game Science Research Center

Andrea “Liga” Ligabue is both a game expert, member of the International Gamers Award and Goblin Magnifico committee, and an educational expert with more than 3000 hours of activities in schools using board games and more than 15 years of experience in training teachers and educators in using games as educational tools. He owns more than 2500 board games.

Mikko Meriläinen

Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Tampere University, in the Center of Excellence in Game Culture Studies

Dr. Mikko Meriläinen is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Tampere University, Finland and the Vice President of the Finnish Society for Game Research. His research focuses on the intersections of gaming and other areas of everyday life, and in his previous work he has addressed for example young people’s participation in gaming cultures as well as miniature gaming. He is currently studying men and masculinities in gaming from a reparative perspective. You can find his publications at https://mikkomerilainen.com/julkaisut/

Philippe Robert

Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, Director of the Cognition, Behavior & Technology team (CoBTeK-lab), co-Director of the CMRR (Resource and Research Memory Center) of the University Hospital of Nice, and President of the IA (Innovation Alzheimer – Affect – Autism) association

His areas of expertise include behavioral and psychological symptoms, assessment and treatment of apathy, and the use of new technologies for diagnosis and stimulation in neuropsychiatric pathologies.

Melissa Rogerson

Lecturer in Human-Computer Interaction in the School of Computing and Information Systems at the University of Melbourne.

Her research focuses on board game practice in both physical and digital forms, as well as the characteristics and motivations of hobbyist board game payers, designers, and developers. She is currently studying the use of digital tools in hybrid digital board games and the potential for hybrid distanced play, which connects people in different locations to play with physical components. She has led two projects that have been funded through Game in Lab.

Lisa Rougetet

Lecturer in History of Science at the University of Western Brittany, attached to the Center François Viète.

Her research focuses on the history of (mainly determined) games and their mathematical theories, from the first works of mathematical recreation published in the 17th century to the programming of computer games in the middle of the 20th century. She is also a trainer at the INSPÉ (National Higher Institute of Teaching and Education). In this context, she is interested in the use of games in the teaching of mathematics, from primary to high school.

Elifsu Sabuncu

Doctor in Biology, Head of Scientific Mediation and Digital Communications, ITEM, CNRS

Dr. Elifsu Sabuncu is interested in Philosophy and the History of Science. She is the Head of Scientific Mediation and Digital Communications at ITEM laboratory (institute of modern texts and manuscripts) CNRS – ENS.

Ulrich Schadler

Dr. phil, Archaeologist, Director of the Swiss Game Museum (La Tour-de-Peilz)

Since 2019, he has held a Chair in Cultural History of Antiquity and the Middle Ages at the University of Fribourg (CH). Since 2017, he has been collaborating with Véronique Dasen on the project “Locus Ludi” (ERC Advanced Grant) and conducting research on the History of games for more than 25 years. He is a founding member of the Board Game Studies (BGS) group, which annually organizes the international colloquium of the same name, and a member of the editorial board of the BGS Journal (De Gruyter, online). Together with Rainer Buland, he is the editor of the series of publications entitled “Ludographie”.

Thierry Wendling

Anthropology researcher

He is a an anthropology researcher at the CNRS, the French National Center for Scientific Research. He is the co-director of LAHIC (IIAC, CNRS-EHESS). He also co-directs the journal Ethnographiques.org, of which he is one of the founders.

Vinciane Zabban

Lecturer at the University Sorbonne Paris Nord in the laboratory EXPERICE

She is interested in technical and social mediations of leisure activities and social forms of creative expression. Her current research focuses both on the designers, production, and practices of video games and on the effects of the Internet on their practice and the market.

Lichao Zhu

Senior Lecturer, Center for Interlanguage Linguistics, Lexicology, English and Corpus Linguistics, Paris Cité University

Lichao Zhu is an Associate Professor of Computational Linguistics at Paris Cité University. He works on the vocabulary of games. He has been interested in puns and linguistic mechanisms of playfulness during his PhD and has been working on these subjects using NLP and AI techniques and tools since then. He loves playing chess, board games and video games
He is also a member of the Scientific Council of the GIS “Games and Societies”.

https://cv.hal.science/lichao-zhu