Addrich Mauch received his PhD in musicology in Bern in 2023 (summa cum laude). He enjoys playing the double bass and previously worked as a boat builder. With his background in cultural anthropology in music and philosophy, he focused on game studies from his Master in World Arts onwards, specializing in the subjective perception, immersion, and interaction of the player and virtual worlds. He is currently researching Swiss gaming cultures as part of the SNF project »Confoederatio Ludens«.

Adrian Demleitner is a researcher at the Institute of Design Research HKB (Switzerland) whose work is situated at the intersection of critical code studies, visuality and video game studies. Being part of Confoederatio Ludens, which examines the history of video games in Switzerland, he is currently engaged in research for his dissertation. His research explores the intricate relationship between code and visuality in video games, with a particular emphasis on the code practices employed in early video games.

Arno Görgen, Dr. biol. hum., is senior researcher and co-lead of CH Ludens at Bern University of the Arts. In CH Ludens, he researches early gaming cultures and communities. His further research focuses on pop-cultural representations of illness, science and medicine, systems theory and the political history of ideas. He also hosts the academic podcasts “Design. Macht. Gesellschaft.” and ‘Kritische Controller’.

Aurelia Brandenburg studied history, Digital Humanities and Cultural Landscapes at Würzburg and is now part of CH Ludens as a PhD student. Her research focuses on the intersection of Game Studies, Gender Studies and history and her PhD project is about German Gaming Magazines and masculinity until 2000. Furthermore, she’s part of the Arbeitskreis Geisteswissenschaften und Digitale Spiele (Working Group Humanities and Digital Games, AKGWDS) and has been a member of its board since 2020.

Beat Suter is senior lecturer for Game Design at the University of the Arts Zurich, Switzerland (ZHDK), and manages the GameLab (gamelab.zhdk.ch) together with René Bauer. He has a doctorate from the University of Zurich in Literature studies. He also studied in San Diego, Berkeley and Oxford and lectured in Stuttgart. He has been working as publisher and author on many books and made a set of creative tools for game designers. He is founding member of the internationally known art group AND-OR (www.and-or.ch) that specializes in artgames and netart. He researches the history of Swiss game design since 2013 and has the Co-Lead of the ZHDK group for the research project CH-Ludens chludens.ch.

Eugen Pfister is historian and political scientist and project lead of the SNF Sinergia project "CH Ludens". He researches and teaches the history of idea of and in digital games and the history of political communication. From 2018 to 2022 he was lead of the SNF Ambizione project "Horror - Game - Politics" at the Bern University of Arts (HKB.) He studied history and Political Sciences at the University of Vienna and at the Université Paris IV - Sorbonne. He wrote his PH.D. in History of Political Communication at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität Frankfurt and the Universita degli studi die Trento. Eugen Pfister is founding meber of the Arbeitskreis Geisteswissenschaft und Digitale Spiele.

Hiloko Kato works as a Postdoc in the SNF Sinergia project «Confoederatio Ludens - Swiss Game History, Play and Game Design 1968-2000». In this project, her focus of interest lies in the media reception of Swiss games, such as television, newspapers and game magazines. She investigates games as a cultural asset using media and discourse linguistic approaches. Hiloko is a lecturer in Game Design at the Zurich University of the Arts, focusing on game reception and game interaction studies. She also works as Head of Research at the MEEET Lab @ DSI and UB of the University of Zurich, a place dedicated to the mediation of old and new technologies for research and academia. Furthermore, she is the DSI Community Gaming chair, a network for researchers and stakeholders interested in digital games.

Mela Kocher works at the Zurich University of the Arts ZHdK as co-head of the e-learning unit, focusing on ludic digital didactics and playification. Additionally, she is deputy head in the Masters program in the game design specialization where she is mentor and lecturer. In the CH Ludens project she researches Swiss pinball and arcade history and studies the development of public play culture.

Pierre-Yves Hurel is a postdoc researcher at University of Lausanne (Switzerland) and part of the SNSF-Sinergia-research project “Confoederatio Ludens: Swiss History of Games, Play and Game Design”. His work is focusing mainly on amateur game making and regional video game history. He is a collaborator of the GameLab UNIL-EPFL and co-founder of the Liège Game Lab.

René Bauer studied German philology and literary studies, biology and computer linguistics at the University of Zurich. He is head of master education program in game design at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) with focus on Game Engine Development and works as co-director of the GameLab. He works as lecturer and researcher, reflecting on Game Studies and Cultural Studies, and is furthermore involved in curriculum and research project development. As a game designer and software engineer, he develops own game projects: He experiments in the intersection between digital games and art with AND-OR (www.and-or.ch/) and works on collaborative online writing and knowledge spaces like rhizomz (www.rhizomz.ch)

Tobias Hodel is a professor of Digital Humanities at the University of Bern. His work focuses on information extraction and production of historical data, epistemologies of digital approaches, and the theory of DH. He has a PhD in history from the University of Zurich and is in charge of three SNSF projects.

Yannick Rochat is an assistant professor in video game studies within the Department of Linguistics and Information Studies at the Faculty of Arts, UNIL, and a co-founder of the GameLab UNIL-EPFL. Interdisciplinarity is at the core of his work. His research focuses on video games and computing heritage in Switzerland, historiography of video games, platform studies, media archaeology, mathematics in games, research-creation, and digital humanities. Links: