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 an Associate Professor and Docent 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.

Jason Cox (Ph.D., Ohio State University) is an Associate Professor of Art Education at the University of Toledo in Toledo, Ohio. His research focuses on games and play as arts-based research. He is the author of the keepsake RPG Five Hundred Year Old Vampire as well as numerous larps.

Susan Haarman (Ph.D., Loyola University Chicago) is the director of campus partnerships for Interfaith America, where she promotes religious and civic pluralism across all aspects of university life.  She previously served as Associate Director at Loyola University Chicago’s Center for Engaged Learning, Teaching, and Scholarship where she facilitated 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 serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Role-Playing and is the series editor for Routledge Press' Education and Analog Role-Playing Games Series. She is also a professional improviser, a licensed therapist, and has been running a years long campaign that takes inspiration from the history of Chicago, which is always more fantastical than fiction.

Joshua Juvrud is an associate professor in Game Design at Uppsala University, where he previously received his Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology. As a research psychologist, his work has focused on the ways that novel techniques in research (eye tracking, pupil dilation, virtual reality) can be used to assess how children and adults perceive and interpret people, emotions, and actions. Juvrud focuses his research in two fields. In developmental psychology at the Child and Baby Lab in Uppsala, he seeks to understand how children learn about their world through social cognitive processes, such as play. In games research at the Games & Society Lab at the Department of Game Design in Visby, Gotland, his work examines the psychology of people, their actions, and emotions in game development, player engagement, learning, and immersion. He aims to understand better how different game players (with different personalities, traits, and experiences) interact with various game mechanisms and are, in turn, affected by game experiences.

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.

William J. White (Ph.D., Rutgers University) is 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).

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

Staffan Björk, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden

Kristian A. Bjørkelo, University of Bergen, Norway 

Ryan Blackstock, Michigan School of Psychology, USA

Paul Booth, DePaul University, USA

John Bucher, Pacifica Graduate Institute, USA

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

Dom Ford, University of Bremen, Germany

Antero Garcia, Stanford University, USA

Jennifer Genova, Woodbury School, USA

Chloe Germaine, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK

Michael J. Giordano, Kobe International University, Japan

Sonia Gollance, Ohio State University, USA

Sanne Harder, Banedanmark, Denmark

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

Emily Kugler, Howard University, USA

David Jara Soto, Heidelberg University, Germany

Karin Johansson, Uppsala University, Sweden

Katherine Castiello Jones, University of Cincinnati, USA

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

Joshua Juvrud, Uppsala University, Sweden

Susan Longfield Karr, University of Cincinnati

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

Joe Lasley, University of Southern Maine, USA

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

Andreas Lieberoth Wadum, University of Aarhus, Denmark

Yuqiao Liu,Uppsala University Campus Gotland, Sweden

Jed Locquiao, University of Nevada, Reno, USA

Greg Loring-Albright, Drexel University, USA

Sergio Alberto Losilla Ferdández, Neutron Therapeutics, Finland

Esther MacCallum-Stewart, Staffordshire University, Scotland

Terrance MacMullan, Eastern Washington University, USA

Tony Manninen, University of Tampere, Finland

Frans Mäyrä, University of Tampere, Finland

Johanna Mellén, University of Borås, Sweden

Ian S. Mercer, Fairleigh Dickinson University, USA

Nicholas J. Mizer, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA

Michał Mochocki, University of Gdańsk, Poland

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

Albert R. Spencer, Portland State University, USA

Gabe Sopocy, Publicis Sapient, USA

John Stavropoulos, School of Visual Arts, 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

Emma Leigh Waldron, UC Irvine, USA

Orla Walsh, University College Cork, Ireland

Kellynn Wee, University College London, UK

Josefin Westborg, Uppsala University, Sweden

William J. White, University of Pennsylvania Altoona, USA

Trenton Wirth, University of Cincinnati, 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.