Paul Milliman, PhD
WONDER HOUSE @ SXSW 2023 Talk:
Gaming the Past: History as Time Travel
Sunday, March 12, 5:30 p.m.
Surround Stage
ALISON & PAUL'S CONVERSATION: Gaming the Past: History as Time Travel
Watch Paul & Alison's Conversation on YOUTUBE:
UArizona History’s pathbreaking collaboration with Age of Empires IV opens new possibilities for creative and meaningful virtual time travel. Combining research and imagination, historical video games allow us to travel through time and space, helping us engage with stories that waken the mind to multiple perspectives and to future pathways of thoughtful and creative exploration. Dive into immersive gaming and rich history with the professors behind the Age of Empires IV Illuminated History Experience. In collaboration with game designers from Microsoft's World's Edge game studio and Relic Entertainment, they bring together immersive gaming and rich history for a new way to understand our shared past.
ABOUT PAUL
Paul Milliman has taught medieval and world history at the University of Arizona since 2007, when he was awarded a PhD from Cornell University. His research has been funded by the American Council of Learned Societies and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He authored ‘The Slippery Memory of Men’: The Place of Pomerania in the Medieval Kingdom of Poland (Leiden: Brill, 2013) and edited A Cultural History of Leisure in the Medieval Age (London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2023). He served as Director of Undergraduate Studies for the History Department from 2015 to 2017; he also participated in the American Historical Association’s Tuning Project and was among the first cohort of faculty building Arizona Online in the Gen Ed Academy.
Paul has been doing research on games and teaching courses with and about games for two decades, both in person and online. He is widely regarded as an expert on games, play, and leisure, and he continues to explore new methodologies and pedagogies through research and teaching. In recognition of his innovative methodologies prioritizing undergraduate research, Paul was awarded a 2021-2022 Undergraduate Research Partnership Faculty Challenge Grant.