dr. Jasper van Vught
Assistant professor at the Faculty of Humanities, Utrecht University, also specializing in game studies. His focus is on game theory and methodology, video game ethics, and the history and preservation of games as art forms.

Dutch DiGRA Symposium 2025: Futures for Game Research
Call for Abstracts Call for abstracts out now! The Digital Games Research Association is “An international association for academics and professionals who research digital games and associated phenomena.” Its aim is to stimulate high-quality research on games, and to “promote collaboration and dissemination of work by its members.” Aside from the main conference, countries may

Funded PhD position: Playing the Hidden Curriculum
Connected to our project Playing the Hidden Curriculum, we’re recruiting a fully funded PhD student at Utrecht University/University Medical Center Utrecht. The PhD will be conducting research into the “hidden curriculum” prevalent at Utrecht University, using games and play as heuristic to explore the hidden curriculum’s goals and rules (i.e., prevalent norms, social and institutional

Taking Perspectives with Game Design: Teachers wanted for pilot!
The participants of the Playing Perspectives workshop at the Onderwijsfestival at Utrecht University are fully engaged in conversation. The striking photo on the table is what they’re talking about. Because what do you see in this photo? What stands out and what is your interpretation? This turns out to be quite different for each participant.

A new game that opens up your mind
Have you ever received a message from someone who’s number is not in your phone? We’ve all been in that situation before, trying to guess who the mystery sender is. This all-too-common situation is one of three starting points of Open Mind, a creative ‘whodonnit’-type educational game. Players have to talk to various characters –

What is (Dutch) Game Research? – Part 1
Is there a specific Dutch identity to the game research conducted in the Netherland? Or at the UU? Part 1 of a series of articles exploring this key question.

Article: Digital literacy games: a systematic literature review
Frontiers in Communication journal has published the open access article "Digital literacy games: a systematic literature review", authored by the team behind the Digital Literacy Games KIEM GO-CI grant project, a collaboration between Erasmus University and Utrecht University.

Game Research @ DiGRA 2024
The yearly international confernce of the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) was held in Guadalajara, Mexico from 1-5 July, and members from the Utrecht Center for Game Research were present to present their current work.

Fostering an Open Mind – First Test of WP2
On June 7th 2024, the Fostering an open mind and open attitude in higher education using games and art-based educational activities (Open Mind) project ran an initial play test of the first two components of Work Packet 2 (WP2), a toolbox to aid students in building games that deal with often complex and polarizing topics in an approachable manner.

Playing the Hidden Curriculum
Playing the Hidden Curriculum: Exposing, materializing and questioning the unwritten rules of higher education is a research project that aims to adress the unwritten social and cultural rules in education, so that the UU will foster its education in a more social and inclusive way.

Week of the Game @ Utrecht University
Here is the full up to date programme overview for Utrecht University's Week of the Game 2024.