Call for Proposals: Board Game Academics conference and journal

deadline for submissions: 
March 31, 2023
full name / name of organization: 
Board Game Academics

Update: The submission deadline for proposals has been extended to March 31, 2023. 

The Board of Board Game Academics (BGA) is pleased to announce that we will hold our first annual academic conference. BGA is a new journal and conference dedicated to the exploration of critical issues within the distinct yet overlapping communities of tabletop board and role-playing games.

While these communities are expanding, players, creators, and scholars of tabletop board and role-playing games have traditionally been late to addressing and including diverse representations and perspectives.

For instance, production companies such as Wizards of the Coast (best known for Dungeons & Dragons) have been criticized for their continued celebration of oppressive ideological perspectives, systems, and governments.

Our combined publication and academic conference aims to contextualize, historicize, and challenge the harmful ideologies rooted not just within gaming materials, but also their communities at large.

Submission Guidelines

Below is a summary of the guidelines for authors interested in submitting proposals for the inaugural issue and conference.

For our inaugural issue and event, we welcome submissions from all disciplines, fields, and academic levels and affiliations. Works we are interested in publishing are reviews (800 words), commentaries (2000 words), and papers (3000-4000 words).

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

  • issues related to the history of tabletop games and their play
  • tabletop games in the class
  • paratextual creation (fan and otherwise) within tabletop gaming communities
  • political economy of tabletop games
  • the mediated depictions of race, gender, sexuality, etc. within tabletop games.
  • Tabletop games for therapeutic purposes
  • Usage and context of gaming in developmental processes
  • View a complete list of recommendations and author guidelines here.

Submit Your Proposal

Abstracts of no more than 250 words for fifteen-minute presentations should be submitted to submissions@boardgameacademics.com by March 31, 2023. Please also include a copies of your CV and preliminary works cited page as PDFs. Acceptance of proposals will be confirmed by May 1, 2023. 

Presentations accepted to the conference will also be preliminarily accepted for publication in the first issue of Board Games Academic in December 2023. For those interested in submitting an abstract for the conference and not the journal (or vice versa), please indicate as such in your proposal.