Play Make Learn

press release: July 20-21, 2023 | Madison

The Play Make Learn (PML) Conference promotes high-quality learning opportunities for educators, researchers, developers, designers, foundation leaders, policy makers, museum and library professionals, and school leaders who are dedicated to promoting making, gaming, and playful learning. We aim to engage our audience in cutting-edge learning science ideas and experiences; communicate state-of-the-art design, education, and research; demonstrate new and upcoming games and technology; and network to spark new projects in the following themes: playful learning, games for learning and positive social impact, making and makerspaces, STEAM education, arts integration in formal and informal spaces, and research/practitioner partnerships.  

The 2023 conference will feature keynote speakers, concurrent sessions, and playful experiences for all! Details will be added to the website as they are confirmed.

Keynote speakers:

July 20: Margaret Huettl, a descendant of Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibweg, Assyrian refugees, and European settlers, is the director of the Indigenous Studies Certificate at UW-Oshkosh. She is a scholar of Native American history and North American Wests, and her research examines the continuities of Ojibwe sovereignty in the context of settler colonialism in both the United States and Canada, centering Ojibwe ways of knowing.

July 21: Kishonna Gray is an associate professor of writing, rhetoric & digital dtudies and Africana studies at the University of Kentucky. She is also a faculty associate at the Berkman-Klein Center at Harvard University. Dr. Gray is the author or co-editor of numerous books and articles including her foundational 2014 work Race, Gender, & Deviance in Xbox Live: Theoretical Perspectives from the Virtual Margins, 2018’s edited collections Woke Gaming and Feminism in Play (from our very own University of Washington press) and most recently Intersectional Tech: Black Users in Digital Gaming. She also has a book currently under contract with NYU Press entitled Black Game Studies. She’s a highly sought after speaker and regularly addresses both academic and industry audiences such as at the Game Developers Conference. She is the winner of a number of awards over the years including The Evelyn Gilbert Unsung Hero Award and the Blacks in Gaming Educator Award.