The University of Glasgow’s Games and Gaming Lab (UofGGamesLab) is a cross-disciplinary Research Lab, based in the College of Arts, which has over 200 staff, student and external members with gaming research interests across Arts, Social Sciences, Science and Engineering and MVLS disciplines.

The Lab is diverse, including membership drawn from 5 continents and academic staff in Subjects from Astrophysics to Veterinary Medicine. UofGGamesLab hosts a number of cutting edge funded research projects in areas from tabletop wargaming of environmental policies with public bodies to creating a historical Minecraft version of Robert Burns’ farm at Ellisland.

The Lab hosts or supports a variety of events throughout the year (from seminars to workshops/festivals), shares gaming research news through its electronic network, and leads experimental projects in game creation. Our work crosses over board and card games to mobile/video games and Virtual/Extended Reality. We have worked with a diverse range of partners including public, private and not-for-profit organisations in the UK and internationally.

The Lab has greatly appreciated working with IMSISS students, both as participants in Lab events and as interns and researchers in Lab projects. In Project Tempest, beginning 2021, IMSISS students worked with colleagues from other programmes and staff to co-create a crisis decision-making game, which virtually flooded Glasgow and invited players to respond to the crisis. Some of this work was showcased to thousands of people in the COP26 Green Zone. In Project Red Camelot, for the Cuban Missile Crisis’ 60^th anniversary in October 2022, 37 IMSISS students came together in small team ideation workshops to brainstorm and present new ways of ‘gaming’ this pivotal event in Cold War history. IMSISS students have also been involved in a wide range of Lab activities, from researching and creating games teaching about fake news or international economic diplomacy to delivering talks on AI and the future of wargaming or participating in the testing of new research-led games modelling global power in Project Damocles.

We have also appreciated the opportunity to support student led projects in IMSISS by those formerly working with the Lab, from their designing and running Serious Games with universities internationally to winning significant NATO grant funding to create a crisis simulation.

We much look forward to continued collaboration with the staff and students of IMSISS in the days ahead.

Dr Timothy Noël Peacock

Lecturer in History and War Studies

Co-director of Games and Gaming Lab (UofGGamesLab)