CfP: gamevironments Research Day 2026

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. This year’s theme is “Beyond Play.” Digital games aren’t just entertainment — they shape and are shaped by the world around them. They influence how new technologies spread, how cultures evolve, and how people communicate, learn, and interact. At the same time, broader social and technological changes transform how games are made, played, and talked about. So, the question is what does gaming actually do to society, and what does society do to gaming? We invite students and researchers from any discipline to submit work exploring topics such as:

• How gaming drives the adoption of new technologies
• How gaming cultures spill over into everyday, non-gaming life
• Gaming’s role in representation, inclusion, and shifting social norms
• Gaming in education, religion, politics, and public debate
• Spaces around games — streaming, social video networks, journalism, gamification, and serious games
• Communities within and surrounding games
• Player practices such as modding, co-creation, and informal learning
• Gaming across platforms: transmedia franchises and storytelling
• Shifts in the gaming industry and their broader societal implications
• How communicative AI transforms the role and practices of games, gaming, players and developers
• Figurative, ethnographical and situational analysis of 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 Karsten D. Wolf, Christian Schwarzenegger and Kerstin Radde-Antweiler (games2@uni-bremen.de). 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.

More Information.