Title: Games design methods and playing for resilience Speaker: Dr Vanissa Wanick (University of Southampton)
Date & Time: Wednesday, 18 March 2026, 12:00-14:00
Location: Building 65, Lecture Theatre A 1133 on Avenue Campus
As part of the Programme for Interdisciplinary Resilience Studies Guest Speaker Series we have invited Dr Vanissa Wanick (vwv1n12@ecs.soton.ac.uk) to host a PIRS seminar, Games design methods and playing for resilience, on Wednesday the 18th of March 2026 from 12:00 until 14:00. The talk will be held in Building 65, Lecture Theatre A 1133 on Avenue Campus.
Abstract: This talk explores how game-based design can support systems thinking and resilience through participatory, community-driven practices. Drawing on our co-designed board game Lemonade, developed with young people to facilitate conversations about their futures, we reflect on how structured play can open space for agency, negotiation, and collective imagination.
Building on this, this talk discusses CivicMAGIC, a recently funded seed project investigating tabletop role-playing games as safe spaces for collaborative worldbuilding and decision-making. While systems thinking is central to these practices, our findings suggest that resilience also depends on relational capacities like empathy, collective sense-making, and shared responsibility.
The talk concludes with insights from a PIRS PhD project developing arcade-style simulations to explore resilience in human-altered environments, examining how playfulness can deepen engagement with complex ecological systems.
Together, these projects argue for games not simply as engagement tools, but as interaction design methods for cultivating civic agency and collective resilience.
Please fill out this form to register for the event
Refreshments will be provided. This is also reflected in the PIRS Calendar on SharePoint
We look forward to seeing you there!