The Northern Star symposium is an annual meeting place for social media, play, games and communication scholars to exchange ideas and thoughts at a stage before they are to move on to publication. The goal is to have a meeting place for peers to discuss ideas while they are developing, to foster unexpected directions of study and research, and support budding ideas.
The topic for 2022 is Obscurity.
Key notes:
Konrad Sierzputowski: "All that Kinky Cyber Dreams: New Media and Queer Sex-Education in Poland"
Nele Van de Mosselaer: "Obscure Fiction: Asking the "Silly" Questions"
Maria Ruotsalainen: "Women in Esports: The Obedient, the Obscene, and the Obscure"
About the key note speakers:
Konrad Sierzputowski received his Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from Jagiellonian University, where he studied the evolution of queer music under the transfigurations of global neoliberalism. His research oscillates around the history of LGBTQ+ music and the politics/aesthetics of queer sonic resistance. In 2018, he published his first book "Listening to the Holograms: Corporeality of Virtual Animated Bands" where he researched semiotics and somathoaesthetics of "non-human" music performances. He is the recipient of a Fulbright Junior Research Scholarship at Columbia University Music Department (2020/21) and the "START" Scholarship of the Foundation for Polish Science (2021). In 2022 he translated and adapted the musical "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" for the Capitol Musical Theater in Wrocław.
Nele Van de Mosselaer is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. Her main fields of interest are the philosophy of fiction, game studies, and narratology. In her research, she explores the relation between imagination, emotions, actions, and desires in the context of fiction experiences. She is especially interested in how the boundaries between reality and fiction can be blurred within virtual environments. She has also co-designed a philosophical videogame about these subjects.
Maria Ruotsalainen (University of Jyväskylä) works as a project researcher and coordinator at the Centre of Excellence fin Game Culture Studies. Her research focuses mainly on gender in competitive gaming. In her recent dissertation she examines gender and nationality in competitive Overwatch, asking how the ongoing sportification effects the way these are negotiated, affirmed, and contested. Her research furthermore investigates what kind of bodies are invited to and allowed in the space of competitive gaming and how these bodies are governed and by who. Beyond competitive gaming, her research touches upon variety of topics, including Nordic populism, hate speech, populism and masculinities, reception studies, and porn studies. Maria Ruotsalainen has published in journals such as Men & Masculinities, Game Studies, Games and Culture, and Television and New Media. She has also edited (together with Veli-Matti Karhulahti, University of Jyväskylä, and Maria Törhönen) the book "Modes of Esports Engagement in Overwatch" published by Palgrave Macmillan. She is a board member of the Finnish Game Research Association and a member of the equality committee of the international Esports Research Network.