From the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the Covid-19 pandemic, wargames are a key way the US military plays out responses to current crises, explores the effectiveness of future operations and strategies, and trains personnel. Politics of Play: Wargaming with the US Military (Oxford University Press, 2024) is the first academic book dedicated to the US military wargaming renaissance. Grounded in 100 hours of original interview data gathered at US military wargames and schoolhouses, the book explores how games intervene in players' cognitive and affective registers using immersion and the drive to win. In addition, it develops a new theory of play grounded in the thought of Jacques Derrida which seeks to expose and disrupt the politics and power relations at work in the use of games to produce warfighters in the digital age. At this launch event, author Dr Aggie Hirst (King's) will be in conversation with Dr David Banks (King's), Dr Ellie Bartels (Joint Staff J-8), and Dr Dan Öberg (Swedish Defence University).

About the author

Dr Aggie Hirst is Reader (Associate Prof) in International Relations Theory and Methods in the Department of War Studies at King's College London. Her research is situated in international political theory and critical military/war studies. She completed her ESRC-funded PhD at the University of Manchester in 2010. She is author of Politics of Play: Wargaming with the US Military (OUP 2024), and articles with International Studies Quarterly, Security Dialogue, International Political Sociology, and Review of International Studies focused upon play, games, and the military wargaming renaissance. She is also co-author of Global Politics: Myths and Mysteries, a student-facing book that offers a novel approach to teaching theory.

Chair

Dr David Banks is a Senior Lecturer in Wargaming at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, where he also serves as the Academic Director of the King’s Wargaming Network. His current wargaming research focuses on determining epistemological standards for evaluating wargames as a research method. His wargaming research has been published in International Studies Review, Georgetown Press, and the Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity, His wider research is also published in International Studies Quarterly and Security Studies,. He received his PhD in International Relations and Methods from George Washington University in Washington, DC.

About the speakers

Dr Elizabeth “Ellie” Bartels is a force planner for the U.S. Department of Defense, with a focus on improving the use of games to inform strategic and operational decisionmaking. She currently serves as the senior wargaming analyst within the U.S. Joint Staff J8’s Studies, Analysis, and Gaming Division, designing games for senior Department of Defense and interagency leaders on a wide range of topics. Before her tenure on the Joint Staff, Dr. Bartels was the team lead for Force Planning, Design, and Concepts within the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy’s Strategy Office, the co-Director of the Gaming Center at the RAND Corporation, and a researcher at Caerus Associates and the National Defense University. Her academic research focusing on applying research design principles from the social sciences to the development of games to shape national security policy.

Dr Dan Öberg is a Senior Lecturer at the department of Systems Science for Security and Defence and an Associate Professor of War Studies at the Swedish Defence University. He is a former STINT visiting professor at Tokyo University (2015-2016) and holds a PhD from Yokohama National University, Japan. For the last decade, he has been teaching military officers on all levels as well as published on war in international academic journals and edited volumes among other things on targeting, operational warfare, and military design. He has participated in various roles in military training and international staff exercises and his present research is focused on the interplay between warfare and creativity. In addition, Dan has acted as guest editor of International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, associate editor of Journal of Narrative Politics, and co-convenor of the Security and War Research Group (with Dr Tom Lundborg) at the Swedish Defence University.

Politics of Play: Wargaming with the US Military – Aggie Hirst