Play for Change: Exploring Games and Playful Interactions for Real-World Impact

This research seminar showcases cutting–edge work from the University of Salford exploring how play, serious games, and playful interaction can address real–world challenges. From education and health to environmental awareness and social transformation, our invited researchers investigate how playful design fosters learning, engagement, and meaningful change.

Speakers

Dr Chloé Germaine

Reader in Environmental Humanities at Manchester Metropolitan University and co–director of the Manchester Game Centre. Her research considers game play and game making practices in critical literacy, activism and research. She also researches the environmental impact of game development alongside their potential in culture and society as agent of transformative change.

Joseph Fowler

PhD student at the University of Salford and teaches Creative Audio and Final Project on BA (Hons) TV and Radio. His research, funded by the university’s Widening Participation Scholarship, examines post–pandemic audience enjoyment of spatial audio and playful learning within heritage tourism. Joseph is an AV Artist, specialising in alternative methods for humans to interface with music, and produces heritage themed documentaries for BBC Radio 4 including the recent ‘How Trains Shrink Time and Space‘. His work has been presented at TEDx, Dorkbot, and Islington Mill. He also works as a sound designer for games and animation.

Professor Chloe James

Graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a BSc (Hons) in Medical Microbiology and completed her PhD at the University of Liverpool, where she began her long–standing work on bacteriophages. She went on to research polymicrobial dental biofilms at the University of Florida and antibiotic transport in Gram–negative bacteria at Aix–Marseille Université. Returning to Liverpool as a Wellcome Trust Postdoctoral Fellow, she investigated phage effects on cystic fibrosis. Since joining the University of Salford in 2012 and becoming Chair in Microbiology in 2022, her research has focused on temperate bacteriophages, host–pathogen interactions, and antimicrobial resistance. She is also committed to open science and public engagement in microbiology.

Dr Juan Hiriart

Creative technologies specialist whose teaching spans games, extended reality, and interactive storytelling. With more than twenty years of experience as an artist, designer, and coder, his professional work includes illustration, design, and game development. His research focuses on how gaming and immersive technologies can be used for social good, particularly through the design of educational games in history, heritage, and the sciences. A key area of his current work involves collaborations with South American Indigenous communities, using participatory and community–led methods to help revitalise endangered languages through digital and immersive media.

Dr Adam Hart

Lecturer in Music Technology at the University of Salford. His research explores gaming technologies within inclusive education practices, and is currently focused on the use of Minecraft to support neurodivergent inclusivity in youth work. He co–leads the Neurodivergent Researchers Network at the British Educational Research Association.