About

Hello! I’m Sylvester Arnab.

I am a Professor of Game Science (Applied Games) at Coventry University, UK, where my work explores how playful, gameful, and participatory approaches can be used to address educational and societal challenges.

My research sits at the intersection of game science, education, design, and social innovation. I am particularly interested in how the principles and values that make play meaningful, such as agency, autonomy, curiosity, sociality, experimentation, and meaningful fun, can inform the design of learning experiences, resources, spaces, and community interventions.

“Game science … is defined as a field that investigates how playful and gameful experiences are designed and applied based on strategies and elements commonly used by game-based approaches (analogue and/or digital), which include game-based learning, serious games, and gamification and how their operations are underpinned by pedagogical and motivational theories and practices…”
— Arnab (2020, p. 57)

Play, participation, and positive change

A central thread throughout my work is the idea that play is not simply a product or activity, but a way of designing for participation, agency, creativity, and change.

My work has evolved from serious games and game-based learning into a wider programme of research encompassing playful and gameful design, co-creation, frugal approaches, inclusive education, community engagement, and interdisciplinary practice. Increasingly, I am interested in how these approaches travel across contexts, from classrooms and universities to communities, cultural spaces, and environmental settings.

I am a co-founder of the award-winning GameChangers initiative, which has become an important platform for this work. Through GameChangers and its growing family of projects, I have worked with researchers, educators, students, communities, artists, NGOs, and other partners across the UK and internationally to explore how playful and participatory approaches can be adapted to different needs, cultures, resources, and contexts.

This has included work spanning STEM education, teacher development, inclusive learning, youth and community engagement, environmental sustainability, arts and culture, digital and emerging technologies, and capacity building. An important part of this work is developing approaches that are not only engaging but also accessible, adaptable, resourceful, and sustainable.

My research has been supported by organisations including UKRI research councils, the European Commission, the British Academy, and the British Council, alongside numerous international and institutional partners.

Research, practice, and collaboration

I see research as something that should be conducted with people rather than simply about them. Participatory research, playful co-creation, and knowledge exchange therefore feature strongly across my work.

Much of my recent research explores what happens when playful values meet frugal, participatory, and place-based approaches. This has taken my work beyond conventional understandings of games and gamification towards examining playfulness as a broader design orientation: a way of creating conditions in which people can explore, contribute, experiment, make, reflect, and shape their own experiences.

Interdisciplinarity is fundamental to this. I enjoy working across boundaries and bringing together perspectives from education, game and interaction design, arts and creative practice, technology, social sciences, and community knowledge.

I have published more than 150 academic outputs and regularly speak at academic, professional, and public events internationally. My book, Game Science in Hybrid Learning Spaces (Routledge, 2020), brings together much of the thinking underpinning my approach to Game Science and the design of playful learning experiences.

My journey

Before my current role, I contributed to Coventry University’s Disruptive Media Learning Lab and conducted research through the Serious Games Institute. Earlier in my career, I was based at WMG, University of Warwick, where I completed my PhD in Engineering in 2009. My academic journey has also included the University of Manchester and the University of Leeds.

Across these different stages, one question has remained remarkably consistent:

How can we design experiences that enable people to participate, explore, create, and make meaningful change?

Games provided my original route into that question. Play has since taken me much further.

A little more about me

I am of Bornean origin, and my connection with Borneo continues to influence my interests in place, culture, community, creativity, and environmental sustainability.

I love beautiful things, creative ideas, unexpected collaborations, and exploring what happens when disciplines and people that do not normally work together are brought into the same space.

And I am always game for a new adventure.