Imogen Kaufman

Thesis title:

A lived and living UK gaming oral history: untangling narratives of resistance and resurgence in videogame space

Research Area

Media

Publications

Velvet Spors and Imo Kaufman, ‘Respawn, Reload, Relate: Exploring the Self-Care Possibilities for Mental Health in Games through a Humanistic Lens’, Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 5, no. CHI PLAY (5 October 2021): 1–31.

Kaufman, Imo. ‘To the (Fictional) Concentration Camp: Wrestling with Jewish Pain and Emptiness in Brenda Romero’s Train,’ Game Studies 23, no. 1 (March 2023). https://gamestudies.org/2301/articles/kaufman.

Kaufman, Imo. 'Silence, Distance and Disclosure. The Bleed Between the Far-Right and Gaming,' gameenvironments 18, (2023): 1-37. https://journals.suub.uni-bremen.de/index.php/gamevironments/article/view/232

Kaufman, Imo. ‘Safety and Silence: Oral history, far-right research, and the paradox of the ‘vocal minority’ in Vaughan, A., Braune, J., Tinsley, T. and Mondon, A. (eds). 2024. The Ethics of Researching the Far Right. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Spors, Velvet. Kaufman, Imo. 'Players, Take (Self-)Care: Bringing Humanistic Psychology into a Game Jam about Mental Health', Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 8, CHI PLAY, Article 329 (October 2024), 27 pages. Honourable mention.

Conferences

BEYOND Conference 2020: Spoke about the National Videogame Museum's Animal Crossing Diaries Project which you can read more about here: https://thenvm.org/the-animal-crossing-diaries/

SXSW Festial 2021: Spoke about the National Videogame Museum's Animal Crossing Diaries Project, talking about our initial findings from the open call and plans moving forward.

M4C Research Festival 2021: Produced a game about my initial research experiences of oral history interviews on Twine: "Searching for Identity, Ideology and the 'I' in Oral History Interviews."

British DiGRA 2021: Presented a paper: "“– why do you need a game to make you give a s#@! -?”: Looking at Train and researcher positionality through a Jewish lens."

Hidden Conference 2021: Was part of the team that helped deliver the conference and also presented a paper: “– why do you need a game to make you give a s#@! -?”: Looking at Train and researcher positionality through a Jewish lens."

BEYOND Conference 2021: Peer reviewed posters.

ChiPlay 2021: Presented research paper: "Respawn, Reload, Relate: Exploring the Self-Care Possibilities for Mental Health in Games through a Humanistic Lens."

Multiplay Conference 2022 on the theme of Identity: Presented a paper: "Gamer as a paradoxical place, performance and problem: disaggregating the term gamer through an affective oral history."

Hosted the Multiplay Sex and Romance Conference, February 2022.

Spoke at Nottingham Trent's 'Challenging Heteronormitvity' event for LGBTQ+ History month. Presented paper: "Masculinity in Gaming: A Promise and a Problem."

Oral History Society Conference 'Making Histories Together,' June 2023. Presented paper: "Resistance and Resurgence: Recovering narratives of ‘Gamer’ in UK Gaming spaces."

Presented at The Edinburgh TV Festival (2023) as part of the TV PhD Cohort.

DiGRA (2024): Peer reviewed abstracts.

A-MAZE (2024): Presented "What is a Gamer?" as a hypertalk.

Women in Games 20^th Anniversary Conference (2024): Part of panel "Play as Culture: Drawing Girls & Women to Games."

Empower Up: Empowering the Video Game Industry to be Stronger and more Inclusive for Everyone (2024), held at The National Videogame Museum, in collaboration with Empower Up and UKIE: Invited to be part of the panel.

Public Engagement & Impact

Self-Care Jam, 2021: Ran a Game Jam on the theme of mental health and self-care in collaboration with Velvet Spors and the National Videogame Museum.

Community Organisation

I started up and run a Discord Server for students in the M4C cohort. If you would like a link to join it please contact me via email or twitter.