The playable university

Abstract

Academics, students and other workers in the university are expected to play the ‘university game’ – which includes the playful work of protest and published critique. If there is already engagement with play-as-critique in the NLU, here we aim to explore play-as-agency. Play-as-agency relies on making room for a certain play, or ‘give’, in academic and administrative processes in the NLU, in order to reveal what the university might otherwise be.[2] This play allows for both the collective re-imagination and reconstruction of the rules of the university and ‘playful’ participation in university gatherings (meetings; courses and classes; orientation and training sessions, and so on). In particular, we ask about the value of games in the university, what games can tell us about the values of the university, and how the rules of the university game might be changed by playing it differently.