This two-year project is a collaboration between WGGP, the Siebel Center for Design (SCD), and Playful by Design (PbD), the campus-wide interdisciplinary games studies initiative. Funding provided by the Illinois Global Institute at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

This fall we are assembling a team of scholars who will bring to the project expertise regarding the migrant experience. We're interested in the social and political contexts from which migrants and refugees come; the psychological impacts of violent conflict, disaster, and repression; the requirements of international law with respect to refugees; the specifics of each of these dimensions in Latin American countries, specifically. 
 
In the fall semester 2019, we'll meet together for a series of working lunches (we will provide the lunch), every three weeks on a Wednesday beginning in September. Each session will have a designated leader who will begin the lunch with a brief presentation in his or her area of expertise.  We will also be trying out some existing migration and refugee-themed games.
 
Together our group will contribute content for the syllabus of IS 490: Playful Design Methods, which will be offered in the Spring Semester 2020 to graduate students and advanced undergraduates.  Informed by the readings, presentations and ideas of our team, these students will spend the semester working with game designers, both local and external. By the end of the semester they will be collaboratively created a set of design documents for games that will be built and tested during the second year of the grant.