Editorial Team

Sarah Lynne Bowman (Ph.D., University of Texas at Dallas) is a scholar, game designer, and event organizer. She received her Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the University of Texas at Austin in Radio-TV-Film. She obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Dallas in Arts and Humanities. Bowman teaches in the Humanities, English, and Communication. Currently,  she is a Senior Lecturer for the Department of Game Design at Uppsala University Campus Gotland. She also teaches in the  Humanities department, as well as in Peace & Conflict Studies and Global Studies for the Interdisciplinary Studies department, at Austin Community College. Bowman publishes regularly in scholarly and popular media about the transformative power of role-playing. McFarland Press published her dissertation in 2010 as The Functions of Role-playing Games: How Participants Create Community, Solve Problems, and Explore Identity. Along with her work at the International Journal of Role-Playing, she served as an editor for The Wyrd Con Companion Book from 2012-2015 and is a managing editor for the magazine Nordiclarp.org.

William J. White (Ph.D., Rutgers University) is Associate Professor of Communication Arts & Sciences at Penn State Altoona in Altoona, Pennsylvania (USA). His research interests include the application of rhetorical analytic methods to gaming-related discourse. He is the author of Tabletop RPG Design in Theory and Practice at the Forge, 2001-2012: Designs & Discussions (Palgrave Macmillan 2020) and executive editor of the International Journal of Role-Playing. His TRPG design credits include the Fate Space Toolkit (Evil Hat 2019).

Evan Torner (Ph.D., University of Massachusetts Amherst) is Associate Professor of German Studies at the University of Cincinnati, where he directs the Undergraduate Program in German as well as the UC Game Lab. His work examines the processes and ideologies of cultural production, with a primary focus on the popular media of German-speaking countries as well as niche media of small-press tabletop role-playing games (RPG) and international live-action role-play (larp) communities. Along with his service to the International Journal of Role-Playing, as a games scholar, Torner co-edited Immersive Gameplay (McFarland 2012) with William J. White. He also co-founded and serves as an editor for the journal Analog Game Studies. As a game designer, he has had stand-alone and anthology work published in at least six different languages and written many RPG scenarios for Danish convention Fastaval, including the award-winning Save Some Light For Me (2019). As a community organizer, he co-founded the Golden Cobra Challenge, co-organized the 2017 US run of the queer Norwegian larp Just A Little Lovin’, and co-organizes Games on Demand.

Susan Haarman (Ph.D., Loyola University Chicago) is Associate Director at Loyola University Chicago’s Center for Engaged Learning, Teaching, and Scholarship where she facilitates faculty development and the university’s service-learning program. She publishes around Ignatian Pedagogy and community-based learning, but her real love is her research focusing on the work of John Dewey and the capacity of tabletop role-playing games as formative tools for civic identity and imagination. She also has a Masters in Divinity, a Masters in Community Counseling, and is a licensed therapist. She has been running a three-year campaign that takes inspiration from the history of Chicago, which is always more fantastical than fiction.

Review Board

Maria Alberto, University of Utah, USA

Muriel Algayres, Aalborg University, Denmark

Aditya Anupam, Georgia Tech, USA

Jonne Arjoranta, University of Jyväskylä, Finland

Rebecka Astenvald, Uppsala University, Sweden

Joe Atanasio, Mindful Path Psychology, USA

Josephine Baird, Uppsala University Campus Gotland, Sweden

Graham Ball, Second Step, UK

Lennart Bartenstein, Praxis Lennart Bartenstein, Germany

Miguel Angel Bastarrachea Magnani, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Iztapalapa, Mexico

Anthony Bean, Leyline Therapeutics, USA

Eliane Bettochi, Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, Brazil

Rafael Bienia, Maastricht University, Netherlands

Sharang Biswas, Dartmouth University, USA

Paul Booth, DePaul University, USA

Staffan Björk, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden

Axiel Cazeneuve, Larp in Progress, France

Edmond Y. Chang, Ohio University, USA

Megan Connell, Health Quest, USA

Jason Cox, University of Toledo, USA

Maryanne Cullinan, Lesley University, USA

Stentor Danielson, Slippery Rock University, USA

Steven Dashiell, University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), USA

Sebastian Deterding, Imperial College London, UK

Hazel Dixon, Newcastle University, UK 

Ayça Durmuş, Uppsala University, Sweden

Elizabeth Fein, Duquesne University, USA

Giuseppe Femia, University of Waterloo, Canada

Kathrin Fischer, Bonn Lab for Analog Games and Imaginative Play, Germany

Kristine Flood, National University of Singapore, Singapore

Antero Garcia, Stanford University, USA

Jennifer Genova, Woodbury School, USA

Sonia Gollance, Ohio State University, USA

Sabine Harrer, Uppsala University, Sweden

J. Tuomas Harviainen, University of Tampere, Finland

Kate Hill, EBSCO, USA

Michael Hitchens, Macquarie University, Sydney

Sarah Hoover, NUI Galway, Ireland

Stefan Huddleston, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, USA

Kjell Hedgard Hugaas, Uppsala University, Sweden

David Jara Soto, Heidelberg University, Germany

Katherine Castiello Jones, University of Cincinnati, USA

Shelly Jones, State University Of New York At Delhi, USA

Shirin Khosropour,  Austin Community College, USA

Elizabeth Kilmer, Game to Grow, USA

Lars Konzack, University of Aarhus, Denmark

Nicolas LaLone, University of Nebraska Omaha, USA

Petri Lankoski, University of Art and Design, Finland

Diana Shippey Leonard, Lewis & Clark College, Portland, Oregon, USA

Andreas Lieberoth Wadum, University of Aarhus, Denmark

Jed Locquiao, University of Nevada, Reno, USA

Greg Loring-Albright, Drexel University, USA

Yuqiao Liu, Uppsala University Campus Gotland, Sweden

Esther MacCallum-Stewart, Staffordshire University, Scotland

Tony Manninen, University of Tampere, Finland

Frans Mäyrä, University of Tampere, Finland

Ian S. Mercer, Fairleigh Dickinson University, USA

Nicholas J. Mizer, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA

Michał Mochocki, Uniwersytet Kazimierza Wielkiego

Mirjam Palosaari-Eladhari, Stockholm University, Sweden

Nicholas Pagden, University of Växjö, Sweden

Denise Portinari, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Nick Proctor, Simpson College, USA

Rian Rezende, Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Alex Roberts, University of Victoria, Canada

Alexis Rowland, UC Irvine

Doris C. Rusch, Uppsala University

Wagner Luiz Schmit, Centro Universitário de Rio Preto, Brazil

Premeet Sidhu, University of Sydney, Australia

Amanda Siepiola, Austin Discovery School, USA

Usva Seregina, Independent Researcher, Finland

Gabe Sopocy, Publicis Sapient, USA

Jaakko Stenros, Tampere University, Finland

Ian Sturrock, Teesside University, UK

Weronika Szatkowska, Kozminski University, Poland

Kaya Toft Thejls, Uppsala University, USA

Samuel Tobin, Fitchburg State University, USA

Sedef Topçuoğlu, Bilkent University, Turkey

Evan Torner, University of Cincinnati, USA

Susana Tosca, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Aaron Trammell, UC Irvine, USA

Allen Turner, DePaul University, USA

Matthew Varrette, Inspire Community Support Services, USA

Josefin Westborg, Uppsala University, Sweden

William J. White, University of Pennsylvania Altoona, USA

Shuo Xiong, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China

José P. Zagal, University of Utah, USA

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Former Board Members

Former Production editor Marinka Copier (Ph.D.), HKU University of the Arts Utrecht, the Netherlands. (Issues 1-7).

Former Executive editor J. Tuomas Harviainen (M.Th., PhD), Tampere University, Finland. (Issues 3-5).

Former Executive editor Markus Montola (PhD), Playsome Games, Helsinki, Finland. (Issue 2).

Former Executive editor Anders Drachen (PhD), University of Southern Denmark. (Issue 1).

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Kudos to Lies van Roessel (formatting issue 1), Jephta Peijs (formatting issue 2 and 3) and Sjoerd Mulder (formatting issue 4), HKU University of the Arts Utrecht.