Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

I’m an associate professor at Aarhus University, studying children’s use of media – with a specific focus on the role of new and old media in playful practices.

Why do you think play is important?

Play is about being in the world in a specific sense in which you are open towards impulses, involved in other people, and ready to challenge our conceptions of the world as we know it. As such, play can trigger processes that are of high relevance, both on an individual and a collective level. Especially children’s play cultures have undergone massive changes over the last decades; merely due to changing structural conditions for childhood as such. Media come to play an even more prominent role as motivators and structuring agents for play, which is why a more holistic view on play is needed, in- and outside formal institutional settings.

How do you want to contribute to and shape CounterPlay?

CounterPlay to me is about – well, playing. It is about letting go of traditional, academic genres and challenging my views and understanding of the empirical field that I study. CounterPlay’s strength is its ability to gather people from so many, different areas with so many different ways of approaching play. Last year, we did an ‘academic’ workshop, where we discussed and started writing about play. This resulted in a special issue of an academic journal which will be out this spring. This year, we’ll approach this in a new way, working further towards conceptualising the concept of play and sharing this with a broader audience.