Month: January 2022

The Digital Humanities Climate Coalition

After some wonderfully galvanising encounters in late 2021, Digital Humanities Climate Coalition is now officially a thing. It’s a collaborative and cross-institutional initiative focused on what DH researchers (broadly construed) can do in times of climate crisis and climate transition, especially understanding and improving the environmental impact of DH research. Participants are based at HE institutions and DH Centres across the UK, Ireland, and Northern Europe. There are three working groups doing things over the course of 2022, plus a reading group. If you’d like to find out more or get involved, you can do so here.

Applied Hope Game Jam

The Applied Hope: Solarpunk & Utopias Game Jam was an open games jam run in summer 2021, inviting game designers to create all manner of things related to envisioning positive futures. Entries were mostly storytelling and tabletop roleplaying games, although we also got prototype video games, zines, a Twitter bot, and more.

After poring through almost sixty submissions, some prizes have just been awarded:

1) Best RPG Under Five Pages: subconscious_Routine by poorstudents

2) Best Solarpunk DIY Game: Scraps by Cezar Capacle

3) The Lustrous Effervescing Fontanelle of Luminous Mutable Futures Award: It’s About the Yearning by Lonely Cryptid Media

4) Mx Congeniality: Moon Elves by Maik

5) The Applied Hope Fruiting Bodies Award: Roots & Flowers by The Gift of Gabes

6) The Best Adaptation Award: The Transition Year by Affinity Games

7) Best Game About Something Pretty Specific: Marvelous Mutations & Merry Musicians! by Wendi Yu

Special Prize: Big Buzz Award: The Nurture by hannah j. gray

Some remarks on the winners can be found here.

Utopia on the Tabletop

Utopia on the Tabletop is a forthcoming collection of scintillating interventions and essays about tabletop roleplaying games and their relation to utopian theory and practice. It is being edited by Jo Lindsay Walton and supported by the Sussex Humanities Lab’s Open Practice group. Contributors include:

  • Emma French
  • Francis Gene-Rowe
  • Grant Brewer
  • Kelsey Paige Mason
  • Lesley Guy
  • Vivek Santayana
  • Felix Rose Kawitzky
  • Nicholas Stefanski
  • Maurits W. Ertsen
  • Rafael Carneiro Vasques, Vitor Celli Caria, and Matheus Capovilla Romanetto
  • Benjamin Platt
  • Grace A.T. Worm
  • Allan Hughes and Mark Jackson
  • Jess Wind
  • Nicholas J. Mizer
  • Jo Lindsay Walton
  • Rok Kranjc
  • Kellyn Wee

More to be confirmed!

The collection will launch in early 2023 [UPDATE: OK, late 2023]. It will be a collaboration with MAH’s new imprints Ping Press and Both Are Worse. In the meanwhile, you can keep an eye on Vector, where you’ll be able to get a sneak peek at some of the chapters and interviews. See also the related Applied Hope Games Jam.