Our primary specialisation lies in historical and heritage game studies – research focused on games that depict a historical past or engage meaningfully with cultural heritage. This mirrors the expertise and interests of Dr. Michał Mochocki, C-HIGHER director and principal investigator, and forms the core of our open-access journal, “European Historical Game Studies”. We are equally interested in Historical Game Studies conducted as History, and in Heritage Game Studies approached through Cultural Studies.
We are gradually expanding into game history / history of games. Our team includes Dr. Jan Daniluk, an expert on the history of casinos and gambling. Dr. Mochocki is engaged in two long-term projects whose results have yet to see the light of day: one on Polish games that depict Polish history, and another on Ukrainian games inspired by the events of the 2014/2022 Russian aggression. Much of this work is currently in progress or pending grant funding.
Another promising avenue is game-based historical education and educational game design. Our leading expert in this field, Dr. Ewelina Gdaniec, specialises in digital history and educational technology. As several grant proposals are shaping up behind the scenes, we will expand into historical game-based learning next year.
We are committed to promoting research as popular science through historical games and playful events. Leading this charge is archaeologist Dr. Wacław Kulczykowski, famously known as “the guy whose doctorate was played by 2 mln people around the world”. Check out his game “Waterworks!” and go medieval… in plumbing.
Doctoral School
Based at the Faculty of History, our Doctoral School offers advanced degrees in History, Art History, Archaeology, and Culture & Religion Studies. Although the Polish academic system does not formally recognise Game Studies as a discipline, historical games can be the focus for dissertations in History or Culture Studies.
At present, our doctoral courses are offered in Polish: a more-than-minor obstacle for prospective foreign candidates. Establishing an English-speaking, international doctoral programme in Historical Game Studies is one of our long-term ambitions.
We warmly invite candidates interested in industrial doctorates (“doktorat wdrożeniowy”) centred on the intersection of games and history/heritage – whether in gamedev, ed-tech or the heritage industry.
Research & Development
We are open to Research & Development projects (more elegantly: Research & Innovation) with digital and nondigital game studios, as well as game-based learning and instructional design companies. Our standard contribution to academia-industry partnerships is ‘industrial research’ and ‘experimental development’ (per GBER definitions) in the form of research-based game design and prototyping. As a Faculty of History, we are also well placed to provide historical consultancy for games, drawing on state-of-the-art expertise in history, art history, or archaeology.
An area yet to be explored is collaboration with the defense, resilience, and crisis response sectors. Our team includes defense and security specialists Dr. Kornel Bielawski (Faculty of Social Sciences) and Dr. Bartosz Odorowicz (Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk). We recognise the role of wargaming in defense and resilience planning, peace-gaming in peace education, and serious games in counterpropaganda efforts. History and heritage are not central to these fields, but they are significant enough to justify R&D for governmental and public actors.
We have collaborated on joint R&D project proposals with:
- Uppsala University (Sweden)
- University of Newcastle upon Tyne (UK)
- Durham University (UK)
- University of Bonn (Germany)
- Linnaeus University (Sweden)
- Ethniko Kentro Erevnas kai Technologikis Anaptyxis (Greece)
- Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena (Germany)
- Charles University (Czechia)
- Universitatea de Vest din Timisoara (Romania)
- Tallinn University (Estonia)
- Kherson State University (Ukraine)
- Stichting The War Childhood Museum (Netherlands)