[DiGRA Italia] Helen W. Kennedy keynote at DiGRA Italia 2019: Sub Specie Ludi (Turin, 11th October)

[Paolo Ruffino]

Dear list members,
we are really glad to announce that Helen W. Kennedy will be
presenting as keynote at the DiGRA Italia 2019 conference at the
University of Turin, on October 11th!

Helen W. Kennedy is Head of School of Media at the University of
Brighton, co-editor of the journal Convergence, and lead researcher at
the REFIG (Refiguring Innovation in Games) project. She has been
researching and writing on games and culture since the early 1990s,
focusing on issues of inclusivity and gender. She is one of the
founding members of the Women in Games initiative, and president of
DiGRA from 2010 until 2012. Helen has been one of the earliest authors
to bring a critical perspective to the study of digital games. Her
article ‘Lara Croft: Feminist Icon or Cyberbimbo?’, published on the
journal Game Studies in 2002, has been one of the first essays to ever
take Lara Croft seriously. Her seminal book, co-authored with Jon
Dovey, 'Game Cultures: Computers Games as New Media' (Bloomsbury,
2006) is still one of the key references to understand how digital
games are entangled with the political, technical, and social
complexities of ‘old media’, while introducing new practices and
dynamics of power. Her most recent work, co-edited with Sarah
Atkinson, 'Live Cinema: Cultures, Economies, Aesthetics' (Bloomsbury,
2019), expands her focus on interactive media towards the new cultures
of reception of cinema. Helen W. Kennedy will talk about her
experience within DiGRA, the history and possible futures of games
research, and on the broader relevance of her work on gender and game
culture.

There are still a few hours left to submit your proposals to the DiGRA
Italia conference. The deadline is on June 28th.
The Call for Paper is available at http://www.digraitalia.org/ . An
English version of the CfP can be accessed from the home page. Please
send your abstracts and any query to digraitalia at gmail.com.

Best,

--
Dr Paolo Ruffino
Chair DiGRA Italia