Hosting BDiGRA 2025
The Game Cultures cluster was delighted to host the British DiGRA (Digital Games Research Association) 2025 conference from 20-21 May at Birmingham City University. The conference, co-chaired by myself and Nick Webber, was a great success, welcoming 60 game academics to BCU in person and more joining online. Delegates came from all over the country and ranged from BA undergraduates to Professors in the field. Over the course of the two days we hosted 17 lightning talks, 18 paper presentations, and a workshop around building the intellectual project of British games research, as well as an all important social at one of our local board game cafes, Chance and Counters.
The theme of the conference – “What is British Games Research?” – aimed to map the current field for the national chapter of DiGRA, to get a sense of the wide range of research being done in, or on, or around, Britain, and to consider whether particular intellectual traditions shaped, challenged, or otherwise influenced our research. To that end, the lightning talks – 5 minute presentations – allowed us to build a picture of of games research taking place in, or otherwise connected with, Britain in a way that enabled breadth of ideas and provocations, to promote generative networking opportunities. Meanwhile the more “traditional” paper presentations allowed greater depth of explorations along the themes of Game Making, Culture, Approaches to Horror, Political Sensitivities, Global Perspectives, and Countering Hegemony. The workshop run by myself and Nick aimed to create both something for the community of researchers who have gathered at the conference, as well as something useful for British DiGRA, thinking about next steps. We explored questions about the common threads and themes arising from the conference, whether being in (or about) the UK shapes our approach in specific ways, and what questions need to be asked in and around British Games Research for the future of British DiGRA.
This was the third conference run by the Game Cultures research cluster in the last 12 months, having hosted the international History of Games conference in May 2024, and Video Game Cultures in September 2024. Our cluster is made up of a core of around 10 staff and PhD students all exploring game studies from perspectives within critical cultural theory. It’s a pleasure for us to continue to build a reputation for leading research in this field. We had both new guests and those returning after one of last year’s conferences, and seeing the connections being forged is really rewarding. A new board for the chapter was also elected, including two representatives from BCU – Dr Harrison Charles, who recently completed his PhD with us, and Mark Chapman, who started his PhD project with us in September 2024.
We’re looking forward to curating an edited collection capturing some of the research from the conference, which will be published through Intellect in BCMCR’s “New Directions in Media and Cultural Research” book series.
You can view or download the BDiGRA 2025 Conference Booklet to explore the abstracts for all presentations at the conference, as well as some of the delegate responses to workshop questions.