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.”¹ 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 organise “chapters” nationally. For The Netherlands, this was organised in 2024 at Erasmus University in Rotterdam.² In November 2025 it will be hosted at the Utrecht University.

Different futures for the study of games and play are brewing in the present. Through participation and research we, as scholars, are actively shaping the future of the field within The Netherlands and beyond. At this symposium we explore possible directions for game and play research as an interdisciplinary field. In line with the focus of the international DiGRA conference this year, this means taking a step back and identifying (and/or questioning) important and sustainable thematic foci and approaches, as well as blind spots in the research, teaching, and practice within game research communities in the low countries.³ In doing so we may also contend with a bigger question, discussed at length in a special issue of Eludamos: given the grim socio-political and environmental developments of the last decade, (how) can games and play, or the ludification of culture more generally help “facilitate mobilization for better futures”?⁴

This symposium especially encourages contributions from early career researchers (advanced master students, PhD fellows, post-docs, and independent scholars). We welcome your submissions even if game studies is not your primary field of research. The symposium offers a platform not just for sharing knowledge, but also for sharing pedagogical experience, artistic research, with plenty of time to forge connections to peers and potential collaborators.