Antti Lampinen / Jasmin Lukkari, The Finnish Institute at Athens (The Finnish Institute at Athens)
22.10.2026 – 23.10.2026

Video games have become a significant and influential part of mainstream culture. Consequently, historical game studies have rapidly evolved into a new field of study over the last two decades. The objective of this conference is to direct attention towards two aspects of video games that have received comparatively little scholarly attention; firstly, the representations of social, ethnic and religious aspects of past worlds in video games and, secondly, the reception of the late antique and early medieval periods (however defined) in video games. We also wish to include non-Eurocentric points of view, such as papers focusing on the rarely discussed social, ethnic and religious aspects of the ‘Byzantine’ empire or SWANA (South-West Asian and North African) societies in video games.

In order to encourage discussion between different academic disciplines and to bridge the gap between classical and medieval reception studies, we welcome case studies and comparative studies on the reception – in any game genre – of social, ethnic and religious realities from Classical Antiquity until the Crusades.

The two keynote speakers who have confirmed their participation are Jane Draycott (Glasgow University) and Robert Houghton (Winchester University).

We warmly invite scholars from any discipline to submit an abstract, whether they are PhD students or more experienced academics. Please submit your abstracts and a short bio in English (max. 300 words for the abstract and 50 words for the bio) to Antti Lampinen at ajlamp@utu.fi by 31 March 2026.

The results will be communicated in April. The proceedings of the conference will be published in a collected volume.

The full call for papers can be viewed here: https://lukkarij.wixsite.com/socially-ancient

Source : H-Soz-Kult