Events

Playfulness in Education: A Pedagogical Perspective Beyond Play-Based Learning

Francesca Berti, Free University of Bolzano/Bozen.

This talk explores playfulness in education, extending current discussions on play-based learning towards a broader pedagogical dimension (Berti & Seitz, 2025). While play is widely acknowledged as a means through which children explore the world and construct meaning, and remains a central focus of early childhood education, it receives decreasing attention from primary education onwards, where teaching, learning, and disciplinary knowledge increasingly become dominant. Consequently, playfulness as a pedagogical quality shaping educational relationships also remains underexplored. Drawing on educational sciences and play studies, particularly Masek and Stenros (2021), this talk offers insights from a narrative literature review, suggesting playfulness as a framework for envisioning playful educational spaces.

Francesca Berti is Junior Researcher at the Faculty of Education, Free University of Bolzano/Bozen (Italy). Her research focuses on play pedagogy, intercultural education, and heritage education, with a strong interest in traditional games as a cross-cultural universal.

What They Played in the Salons: Literary Games in Seventeenth-Century Paris
Karin Kukkonen, University of Oslo

In the salons of seventeenth-century Paris, writers, intellectuals and scholars met regularly to discuss the latest from the world of literature but also to play games together. In particular, the early novelists were central figures in these game sessions. Did these games serve as creative catalysts for the novelists? If so, how does the collective dynamic of gameplay relate to the development of novelistic storytelling? This talk will give an introduction to the kinds of games that the salonnières played, what impact they had on storytelling experiments in the early novel and how they can be played today.

Karin Kukkonen is Professor in Comparative Literature at the University of Oslo (Norway). She is the author of several monographs, most recently Creativity and Contingency in Literary Writing (Bloomsbury, 2026). Her current research investigates literary games from the early-modern period and their impact on the development of the novel (JEUX, ERC Consolidator, 2024-2028).