Video Games: Play and Pedagogy
1st November 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM GMT
Video games have emerged as a powerful educational tool, one of the most significant ways in which the public engages with the past. Moreover, games and immersive digital experiences offer historians of visual culture a way to shape more inclusive and authentic public perceptions of the past by making academic research widely accessible to audiences outside the academy.In this panel event bridging video games and education, our guest speakers neuroscientist and physicist Kelly Clancy, Islamic art historian Glaire Anderson (Digital Lab for Islamic Visual Culture & Collections, University of Edinburgh), Maxime Durand (Ubisoft/Assassin’s Creed Discovery Tour), and Chris van der Kuyl (Minecraft), will discuss topics such as the role of video games in shaping our world and human development, and the gamification of education – including how video games are making education and knowledge widely accessible, and informing public perceptions of the past.
Speaker Biographies
Dr. Glaire Anderson is Senior Lecturer in Islamic Art in the School of History of Art and Founding Director of the Digital Lab for Islamic Visual Culture & Collections at the University of Edinburgh, where she is also Programme Director for the MSc in History of Art, Theory, and Display (HATD). An award-winning author, her most recent book A Bridge to the Sky: The Arts of Science in the Age of Abbas Ibn Firnas was published by Oxford University Press in 2024. She works across the academic, games, and GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) sectors and was an historian for Assassin’s Creed Mirage (Ubisoft, 2023) and its educational Codex feature, ‘History of Baghdad’.
Kelly Clancy, PhD, is a neuroscientist and physicist who has held research positions at MIT, Berkeley, University College London, and DeepMind. She develops novel brain-computer interfaces with the aim of understanding the principles of intelligence. Her writing has appeared in Wired, Harper’s and The New Yorker.
Maxime Durand is an award-winning world-design director for the videogame company Ubisoft. Graduated in history, he has collaborated on inspirational authenticity for multiple games of the blockbuster Assassin’s Creed franchise. Maxime co-created and directed the Discovery Tour series, a research-led public history project made in partnership with educators & museums. Having previously collaborated with the University of Edinburgh’s teams at the Digital Lab for Islamic Visual Culture & Collections, Maxime is pursuing under their guidance a Knowledge Exchange Fellowship to further collaborate at the intersection of technology and public engagement.
Chris van der Kuyl is one of Scotland’s leading entrepreneurs working across the technology, media, gaming and entertainment sectors. Chris is most notably co-founder and chairman of multiple award-winning games developer 4J Studios, best known for developing Minecraft for Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo games consoles. He and fellow co-founder Paddy Burns launched Chroma Ventures, the investment arm of 4J Studios, in 2021.Chris is chairman of; Broker Insights, Puny Astronaut, Stormcloud Games and Ace Aquatec and sits on the boards of; Parsley Box, Blippar, Ant Workshop and ADV Holdings. He is also a non-executive director of the Ballie Gifford US Growth Trust.Alongside his commercial roles, he was the founding chairman of Entrepreneurial Scotland and is currently a member of multiple advisory and local charity boards. Elected as one of the youngest Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2013, Chris was also formally recognised for his contribution to technology in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List 2020, becoming a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE).
Caroline Parkinson is Director of Creative for the Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) and works with the Scottish creative and cultural industries to innovate with academia. She developed the EFI plan for developing data-driven innovation within the creative industries and has worked closely with flagship project – Creative Informatics Cluster from 2018-2024. She was Director of Film, TV, Music, Creative Industries, Skills & Innovation for Creative Scotland from 2010-2014, and from 2005-2010 she was Director, Scotland & Northern Ireland for the new sector skills association, Creative & Cultural Skills.She serves on the Board of Architecture & Design Scotland, and for 7 years has served in a voluntary capacity as Strategic Director and Presenter of the MOVE Summit, Scotland’s Animation and VFX Gathering.
