On May 15 2025, a Masterclass and Public Lecture on Virtual Reality and the Immersive Turn with Prof. Mandy Rose will be organised at Utrecht University. Masterclass (9:30h-12:30, for rMA and PhD students) In this masterclass, we will critically analyze immersive technologies through, amongst others, media, postcolonial, and gender studies lenses, reflecting on their ethical
Can a board game help young people better understand sea level rise? Over the past two years, Nieske Vergunst, a researcher at Utrecht University’s Freudenthal Institute, explored this question. She developed the Sea Level Game, tested it with various youth groups, and analyzed its impact. The findings? After playing the game, participants felt more aware
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.
On April 30th 2025, the Utrecht Gamelab and the Manchester Game Centre at Manchester Metropolitan University collaborated on a first-of-its-kind hybrid three-hour co-design workshop, building on the work of Chloe Germaine and Paul Wake on ‘game hacking’ and the ‘franchise hacking’ technique developed by the Utrecht Game Lab on the basis of Germaine and Wake’s
The workshop is part of the ongoing USO project Crisis to Resilience (2024-2027), which develops and evaluates techniques based on creative practices like game-making and community gardening/biophilia to foster resilience counter climate anxiety as well as other negative climate emotions. The workflow used in this workshop is built on top of free and accessible tools
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
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.
On April 30th 2025, the Utrecht Gamelab and the Manchester Game Centre at Manchester Metropolitan University collaborated on a first-of-its-kind hybrid three-hour co-design workshop, building on the work of Chloe Germaine and Paul Wake on ‘game hacking’ and the ‘franchise hacking’ technique developed by the Utrecht Game Lab on the basis of Germaine and Wake’s
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
Can a board game help young people better understand sea level rise? Over the past two years, Nieske Vergunst, a researcher at Utrecht University’s Freudenthal Institute, explored this question. She developed the Sea Level Game, tested it with various youth groups, and analyzed its impact. The findings? After playing the game, participants felt more aware
Utrecht University performed play experiments at Basisschool De Odyssee (Utrecht) to understand the positive effects of playing for children. To what extent does playing together promote self-disclosure? Specifically, the researchers were interested in to what extent playing together creates feelings of safety and social connectedness for children, and to what extent those feelings promote self-disclosure,
On April 30th 2025, the Utrecht Gamelab and the Manchester Game Centre at Manchester Metropolitan University collaborated on a first-of-its-kind hybrid three-hour co-design workshop, building on the work of Chloe Germaine and Paul Wake on ‘game hacking’ and the ‘franchise hacking’ technique developed by the Utrecht Game Lab on the basis of Germaine and Wake’s
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
Utrecht University performed play experiments at Basisschool De Odyssee (Utrecht) to understand the positive effects of playing for children. To what extent does playing together promote self-disclosure? Specifically, the researchers were interested in to what extent playing together creates feelings of safety and social connectedness for children, and to what extent those feelings promote self-disclosure,
Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant has published a longread article investigating the pleasures of blood and violence in games with two Utrecht researchers reflecting on how violence has become part of the gameplay experience, and how it may affect players.