Game Research Seed Money Grants awarded to six proposals

The Utrecht Center for Game Research has awarded seed money grants to six proposals with a total budget of 113.800 €.  

Grant proposals were judged according to the following criteria:

  • Quality of the plan to develop an excellent research proposal that has a good chance of receiving a grant, and the extent to which the seed money project is convincing, in that the resulting research proposal is of excellent quality.
  • The deliverable must be a project proposal for a specific research program and/or call.
  • Relevance to one of the six application domains.
  • Scholarly quality and relevance/appropriateness of the people involved.

The proposals and teams that were granted, in no particular order, are:

1) Game Co-Design for Sustainable City Governance
Application domains: Sustainability/ Smart Cities

Team: Dr. Joost Vervoort -  Assistant Professor, Environmental Governance, Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development; Senior Researcher, Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, Dr. Stefan Werning – Assistant Professor, Media and Culture Studies. Dr. Michiel de Lange – Assistant Professor, Media and Culture Studies.

2) - No title (yet) -
Application domains: Sustainability/ Smart Cities

Team: The people involved in the intended project are with the Energy & Resources group at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Faculty of Geosciences: Drs Wouter Schram- Ph.D. candidate. Dr. ir. Ioannis Lampropoulos- Post- doc researcher. Dr. Tarek Alskaif- Post-doc researcher. Dr.Ir. Machteld van den Broek- Assistant professor. Dr. Wilfried van Sark- Associate professor. Prof. dr. Ernst Worrell- Professor. Dr. Daphne Lentjes- Funding advisor (RSO).

3) DietCare: A Gamified m-coaching program to improve dietary behaviour among adolescents from lower socioeconomic status
Application domain: Health

Team: Dr. Maartje Poelman- Post-doc researcher, Healthy Urban Living Research Program, Department Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Faculty of Geosciences. Dr. ir. Robbert Jan Beun- Assistant professor, Interaction Technology, Department of Information and Computing Sciences, Faculty of Science. 

4) Gamifying stress- reduction for promotion wellbeing
Application domain: Health

Team: Dr. Alishia Williams – Department of Clinical Psychology. Prof. dr. Claudi Bockting – Department of Clinical Psychology. Dr. Ronald Poppe – Interaction Technology, Department of Information and Computing Sciences. Dr. Lotte Gerritsen- Department of Clinical Psychology.

5) Researching the potential of scenario planning games to visualise criminal networks
Application domain: Security and Conflict

Team:  Dr. Ingrid Hoofd- Faculty of Humanities, Media and Culture Studies. Stephanie de Smale- Ph.D candidate-Faculty of Humanities, Media and Culture Studies. Jasper van Vught- Faculty of Humanities, Media and Culture Studies. Dr Stephen Snelders- Faculty of Science, Freudenthal Institute/HPS. 

6) Playful VR and AR Experiences for Social Inclusion
Application domain: Inclusion

Team: Dr. Teresa de la Hera- Faculty of Humanities, Department of Media and Performance Studies. Dr. Wolfgang Hürst- Assistant Professor / UD, Faculty of Science, Information and Computing Sciences. Dr. Michiel Kamp- Junior Assistant Professor, Department of Media and CultureStudies, Musicology. Prof. Dr. Bram Orobio de Castro- Professor and Head of Department, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Department of Psychology. Dr. Margot Peeters- Postdoc Researcher, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. 

More information about the granted proposals will follow.