Critical Play Studio
Critical Play Studio is a research and design collective using games, speculative methods and participatory practice to explore complex social and environmental challenges. We create workshops, tools and collaborative processes around sustainability, AI, social justice, social care, education, and systems change.
Jo Lindsay Walton leads Critical Play Studio. He is Principal Research Fellow in Arts, Climate and Technology at the Sussex Digital Humanities Lab. He holds a Master’s degree in Social and Political Theory and a PhD in Creative Writing, and brings extensive experience in science communication, game design, playful pedagogies, futures thinking, speculative design and the political economy of AI.
Lucy Freedman holds a Master’s degree in Literature and Culture and a PhD in Drama. She works as an Associate Lecturer at Bath Spa University and a Research Development and Fundraising Officer at QMUL. Lucy has extensive experience of working with young people, developing research, and producing participatory events. Her research interests include performance studies, Marxist feminism, and critical work on theatre and state violence, the policing of children, the carceralisation of care, and theatricality and legal authority.
Nathalie Huegler is an Associate Researcher at the University of Sussex, working across a variety of topics including playful learning, sustainability, digital sustainability, transitional safeguarding, social justice, whole systems approaches to care, and systems change. She holds a Master's in International Social Work and Refugee Studies and a PhD in Social Work. Nathalie has a background as a social worker and social pedagogue in and spent over a decade working with asylum-seeking and refugee young people in London. Her wider work spans forced migration, youth justice, social-work education, citizenship and participation.
Our collaborators and connected projects include Perpetua Kirby, Polina Levontin, Onesmus Mwabonje, Wesley Goatley, Dilman Dila, Maurice Ssebisubi, Jana Kleineberg, the African Speculative Fiction Society, Imagine Alternatives, the Digital Humanities Climate Coalition, Applied African Speculative Fiction, Creating with Uncertainty, Farming Futures: Global Imaginaries and Sustainable AI Futures.
