Research Day
The Gamevironments Research Day is a workshop exclusively for early-stage researchers, graduate students and doctoral students. It welcomes research on media-centered approaches, perspectives of game developers and publishers, and viewpoints of gamers. The workshop provides a unique opportunity for participants to engage in discussions and debates about theoretical approaches for studying the intersection of religion, culture, and video gaming. The workshop is held online and on site and provides a collaborative environment for scholars at all stages to learn together and expand and deepen the field of study.
Upcoming Research Day
Video Games and Our Futures
Call for Applications for the gamevironments 2025 Research Day
October 22nd 2025
Hybrid: University of Bremen, Germany / online
The gamevironments Journal is hosting the 4th Annual Research Day (three previous workshops were hosted by the International Academy for Study of Gaming and Religion, IASGAR). Exclusively for early-stage researchers, graduate students, and doctoral students, the workshop welcomes research on all aspects of games and gaming, including media-centered as well as actor-centered approaches, perspectives of game developers and publishers, and viewpoints of gamers. The gamevironments Research Day 2025 offers a unique opportunity to engage in a critical exchange about practical methods and theoretical approaches for studying video games, gaming, and culture. It will provide a collaborative learning environment for scholars and allow graduate students, PhD students, and other early-stage researchers to discuss their work and receive feedback from renowned international scholars in the field.
This year’s theme is “Video Games and Our Futures.” Currently in 21st Century society, we face a range of complex issues and wide-sweeping changes and challenges, ranging from radical political and economic shifts, to the implications of climate change and related environmental threats, migration, the impacts of wars, and the long legacies and effects of colonialism, gender inequities and other related power imbalances. These changes will also transform media environments (such as those for video games) and media practices (such as gaming). As mediums of support, reflection, and documentation, but also through their unique technical and interactive storytelling capabilities, these future and future-oriented games may engage and immerse players in dramatically different altered environments and storyworlds. How, then, may we consider, from production and distribution to characters, narratives, and aesthetics, the nature of these transformations and impacts? What visions of the future are depicted in existing games, how were these games made, and by whom? What social and political issues do they address and engage? How will our interactions with them support, deflect, or otherwise alter our modes of play? How might technical innovation alter what is now familiar to us? These are the questions that we ask you to engage with and to help us understand the potential futures of video gaming.
Send a brief CV and a 500-word abstract on the theme that you’d like to present to this year’s co-organizers xenia.zeiler@helsinki.fi (University of Helsinki Finland) and lissa.holloway@attaway@his.se (University of Skövde, Sweden). Participants will be chosen based on their abstracts. The selected participants will be requested to submit a detailed project description (approximately 2000 words), which will be presented and discussed during the workshop. Invited scholars and selected peers will provide feedback and comments on the participants'
projects.
Experts
Dom Ford, University of Bremen
Gregory Grieve, University of North Carolina Greensboro
Christopher Helland, Dalhousie University
Lissa Holloway-Attaway, University of Skövde
Zhange Ni, Virginia Tech
Kerstin Radde-Antweiler, University of Bremen
Christian Schwarzenegger, University of Bremen
Karsten Wolf, University of Bremen
Xenia Zeiler, University of Helsinki
The best papers get the opportunity to get published as reports in the international peer-reviewed journal gamevironments. Further information will be provided at the workshop. The gamevironments Research Day 2025 will be held in a hybrid form – on site at the University of Bremen, Germany and online. It is a pre-workshop to ZeMKI’s 20th anniversary International Conference "20 Years into the Future: What is our vision of media, data, and society?” which will be held from October 23rd to October 24th 2025, at the University of Bremen. All workshop participants are welcome to also participate in the conference.
There is no attendance fee for the gamevironments Research Day 2025. If participating on site boarding and lodging must be organized individually.
Timeline
June 30 Deadline for applications (CV and 500-word abstract)
July 10 Decision of abstract acceptance
August 31 Registration for the workshop
September 30 Deadline for submission of full papers (approx. 2000 words)
October 22 Gamevironments Research Day 2025
Previous Research Days
Prior to 2025, the Gamevironments Research Day was the IASGAR Research Day.
3rd IASGAR Research Day (University of Bremen, Germany), 28 September 2024
2nd IASGAR Research Day (University of North Carolina at Greensboro, NC, USA), 27 July 2023
1st IASGAR Research Day (University of Bremen, Germany), 8 July 2022
Proceedings
Since 2024, selected presenters from each research day are asked to write a report on their work and submit it to the journal for publication in a forthcoming regular issue.
"Fear the Old Blood." Bloodborne, Christian Concepts of Communion, and Theological Reflection
Blessed Are The Geek. Christian Gaming Content Creators and Digital Discipleship
Sophia Rosenberg
Fanatical Alien Monsters. Halo and Religion in Fan-Forum Discourse
Emma Milerud Sundström
