The seminar will be chaired by Professor Frans Mäyrä, and there will be three invited expert commentators, Professor Souvik Mukherjee, Doctor Hanna-Riikka Roine, and Professor Raine Koskima, to provide feedback on the papers.
Souvik Mukherjee, PhD, is assistant professor in Cultural Studies at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta, India. Souvik’s research looks at the narrative and the literary through the emerging discourse of videogames as storytelling media and at how these games inform and challenge our conceptions of narratives, identity and culture. Related interests and expertise include a broad spectrum of topics in Game Studies ranging from identity and temporality in videogames to the videogame industry in South-East Asia. Currently, he is researching how videogames function within decolonial frameworks and separately, also how certain ancient Indian board-games contribute to the understanding of gameplay. Souvik is the author of two monographs, Videogames and Storytelling: Reading Games and Playing Books (Palgrave Macmillan 2015) and Videogames and Postcolonialism: Empire Plays Back (Springer UK 2017), as well as many articles and book chapters in national and international publications.
Hanna-Riikka Roine (PhD, literary studies) works as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow funded by the Academy of Finland at the Tampere University and as an affiliated researcher in the consortium Instrumental Narratives. Her current research explores the ways in which our entanglement with digital media affects, guides, and shapes our engagement with the possible. Roine is a co-editor of the book The Ethos of Digital Environments: Technology, Literary Theory and Philosophy (2021) and has published articles, for instance, on narrativity and agency in digital RPGs.
Raine Koskimaa, PhD, is a Professor of Contemporary Culture Studies at the University of Jyvaskylä and Vice Director of the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Game Culture Studies. He conducts research in the fields of game studies, digital literature, transmedia storytelling and digital culture. He is the co-founder and co-editor of the Cybertext Yearbook (2000-2010) and the author of Digital Literature. From Text to Hypertext and Beyond (2000). Koskimaa has published widely, especially on digital culture and digital literature, and his writings have been translated to several languages. He is a long time member of the ELO Literary Advisory Board. His current research interests are eSports, games and transmedia, and, time and temporality in digital fiction.
Frans Mäyrä is the Professor of Information Studies and Interactive Media, with specialization in digital culture and game studies, in Tampere University, Finland. He is the founder and co-director of Tampere University Game Research Lab. Frans Mäyrä has studied the relationship of culture and technology from the early nineties, with specialisation in the cultural analysis of technology, particularly on the ambiguous, conflicting and heterogeneous elements in this relationship. Professor Mäyrä has published on topics that range from information technologies, science fiction, and fantasy to the demonic tradition, the concept of identity, and role-playing games. He is currently teaching, researching, and heading numerous research projects in the study and development of games, interactive media, and digital culture. He has also served as the founding President of Digital Games Research Association, DiGRA.
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