Stephanie De Smale Ma
Department of Media and Culture Studies - Media and Performa
Utrecht University
Netherlands
Biography
Stephanie de Smale is a humanities/computer science PhD candidate at Utrecht University, affiliated with the Centre for Conflict Studies and the Centre for the Study of Digital Games and Play. Her research is funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and supervised by Prof. Joost Raessens (New Media), Assoc. Prof. Jolle Demmers (Conflict Studies), and Prof. Johan Jeuring (Software Systems). Stephanie's research focuses on the way in which wartime suffering is imagined and remembered in translocal popular culture communities. Through a case study of a game inspired on the Bosnian war, she traces how war memory is enacted in the game's digital culture. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, the relation between key social actors in the production of meaning is examined, taking into account the role of digital platforms as sociotechnical actors facilitating the flow of communication. The empirical research conducted offers an in-depth case study analysis of everyday practices of remembrance within popular culture, read in relation to peacebuilding and postwar reconstruction in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Research Interest
Cultures, Citizenship and Human Rights
Publications
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de Smale, S. (2016). Game Essays as Critical Media and Research Praxis. Proceedings of 1st International Joint Conference of DiGRA and FDG (pp. 1-15). Dundee: Digital Games Research Association and Society for the Advancement of the Science of Digital Games.
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Overmans, J.F.A., Bakker, W.E., van Zeeland, Y.R.A., van der Ree, G., Jeuring, J.T., van Mil, M.H.W., Glas, M.A.J., van de Grint, E.J.M., Bastings, M.A.S., de Smale, S. & Dictus, W.J.A.G. (2017). The value of simulations and games for tertiary education. (62 p.). Utrecht Univerity.
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de Smale, S., Kors, Martijn & Sandovar, Alyea (2017). The Case of This War of Mine - A Production Studies Perspective on Moral Game Design. Games and Culture - Special Issue on Morality Play (33 p.). SAGE.
