On 16 July, the Centre for Historical Studies (CHS) hosted the in-person section of the Playing with History conference at UON. This was a really interesting and insightful multidisciplinary history event, and it was a pleasure to see so many people from across a range of backgrounds, including local community members, established academics, and current postgraduate research students. We also had an online day on 15 July 2026, which included many international speakers.
Play is an important part of human society; while often associated with children and leisure, it also plays a key role in cultural expression, learning, and socialisation. Making play an important area and tool to study and think about the past.
Play in teaching history
One key area the conference handled was play, particularly in gaming as a way of teaching and understanding the past, especially in exploring agency and historical exploration, but not an explicit retelling of events. This was kick-started by the first talk of the day, presented by Emma Tyler, on how using Tabletop Role Playing games (TTRPG) has been used, and could be used, in teaching to explore the historical Great Fire of London. This allowed those playing to think historically and reflect on the period.
This was followed up by David Lambet’s talk on how an analogue card game can explore Caribbean history in the post-French Revolution era. In which players either play as revolutionary or counter-revolutionary. The most interesting part was how much attention to detail went into decentring European history and centring Caribbean history.
The final talk on gaming in teaching features Northampton’s own Jim Beach and James Allen. They presented how various historical board game simulations they have run in the first-year university student cohort have enabled them to break down silos and create bonds within the group while still stimulating historical themes. They also talked about how they created space for students to reflect on these historical simulations.
However, this is not the only way that play can help with teaching, as seen in Matthew McCormack’s talk on playing with physical objects. It was fascinating to hear about the different ways that physically holding and experiencing an object can help us better understand the past. He gave the conference a chance to explore this for ourselves by getting us to guess what a round black ball was for, which turned out to be an old way that shoe polish was made.
Exploring play in history
Play was important in the past too; this can be seen in Kerry Love’s paper, which explored the changing themes in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century toys and games. They presented many different past examples; one that sticks in my mind is the toy theatre, which was printed in the period and continued characters and key scenes from the plays, which people can then decorate.
The talk by Lucia Quershi on academic play within institutional archives showed how we can play around with ideas and objects within archives. It enabled them to present queer and innovative new readings in materials within the archive, such as an unpublished university autobiography.
I am very thankful to be able to support this event on the day and hear some very innovative and interesting papers.
16 July in-person papers presented:
- Emma Tyler (Northampton), ‘Could you stop the fire? Simulating crisis and contingency in the Great Fire of London’
- David Lambert (Warwick) ‘Tides of Freedom: simulating the struggle in the Revolutionary Caribbean’
- Lucia Quershi (UCL), ‘Playing with institutional archives: a queer reading of sex in a university autobiography’
- Kerry Love (Northampton), ‘Microcosms of society: changing themes in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century children’s toys and games’
- James Allen (Northampton) and Jim Beach (Northampton), ‘Simulations in university History teaching: experiences of getting it right (and also very wrong)’
- Matthew McCormack (Northampton), ‘Playing with objects: history, pedagogy and material culture’
15 July online day Papers presented:
- Tal Ben Zvi (Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design) ‘Playing with History: The case study Hila – The Third Generation (2015)’
- Roslyn Mabry (Chicago Public Library), ‘Stories that click: reimagining Chicago brick-by-brick’
- John Bessai (Toronto) and Sandra Creighton, ‘Playing displacement: historical memory, reflective mechanics, and urban erasure in The Ward – Radical History’
- Mirco Carrattieri, ‘Ludic History: a proposal from Italy’
- Joseph Isaac (Rutgers), ‘Gabata Ma’ahdee: re/examining the local automations of traditional indigenous recipes’
- Xiao Yang (Wisconsin), ‘Material traces of play: children’s interventions in the Lettie Lane paper dolls series’
