Seminar Registration
The seminar is free of charge, along with the rest of the Ropecon. However, registration is required, if you wish to receive the submitted papers prior to the event and want to participate in the discussion during the seminar.
Registration can be done via following link.
Keynote speaker: Björn-Ole Kamm
The keynote speaker of 2021 Ropecon Academic Seminar will be junior associate professor Björn-Ole Kamm from Kyoto university. In his keynote Kamm will share with us the specificities of Japanese role-playing culture, based on his recent book Role-Playing Games of Japan: Transcultural Dynamics and Orderings.
Björn-Ole Kamm (www.b-ok.de) gained his doctoral degree from Heidelberg University and today works as associate professor in Transcultural Studies at Kyoto University where he coordinates Japan’s first international joint degree program in the humanities. His previous research engaged stereotypes, media use, gender, and the border-crossing flows of non-digital gaming in and from Japan (Role-Playing Games of Japan: Transcultural Dynamics and Orderings, Palgrave, 2020; “A Short History of Table-Talk and Live-Action Role-Playing in Japan,” Simulation & Gaming 50 (5), 2019; “Adapting Live-Action Role-Play in Japan,” Replaying Japan Journal 1, 2019).
Kamm is co-editor of the open-access, bilingual Japanese Journal of Analog Role-Playing Game Studies (jarps.net). Together with colleagues in special needs psychology and experience design (Waldritter) and funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, he currently explores live-action role-play (larp) in Japanese educational and therapeutic contexts, co-designing a larp about the everyday challenges of people diagnosed with autism.
Sponsors
Ropecon 2020 Academic Seminar would have been held with the support of The Finnish Cultural Foundation, which provides grants from a central fund and 17 regional funds. For more information, visit the website of The Finnish Cultural Foundation. This year was the second time this grant had been awarded for the Academic Seminar of Ropecon.
Academic Seminar Schedule
Seminar will be organized in Zoom. The link will be provided to all registered participants. You can register to the seminar via this form.
09:30–09:45: Opening words
09:45–10:45: Keynote: Björn-Ole Kamm
10:45–11:00: Break
11:00–13:00: Session 1
– Harrer & Laiti: Outside the racist nostalgia box: rethinking Afrikan Tähti’s cultural depictions
– Tacq & Barbier: Community resources and authorship: how women authorship can give us an insight on resources mobilization in board games world
– Delgado: Designing Original Position – An investigation into the design process of justice-oriented civic board games
– Prax: Why do we even need Games Workshop? The case of Warhammer 40k on Tabletop Simulator
13:00–14:00: Break
14:00–15:30: Session 2
– Kaufman: Blades in the Dark as an affective system: an exploration of alternative play and alternative selves
– Apperley: From ‘the fiend factory’ to Fiend Folio: world building and monster design in AD&D
– Torner: From listservs to itch.io – indie tabletop role-playing games as post-digital space
15:30–15:45: Closing words
Contact us
academic.program@ropecon.fi