The TALOS–AI4SSH Lab at the University of Crete is pleased to announce an international virtual event exploring the evolving relationships between gaming, literacy, and artificial intelligence.

Event Overview

Digital gaming environments have become complex cultural and semiotic ecosystems where language, identity, collaboration, and technology intersect in dynamic ways. At the same time, artificial intelligence is increasingly embedded in digital play—from responsive non-player characters to procedurally generated worlds—while also transforming educational systems and literacy practices. This event brings together leading international scholars to examine how gaming spaces function as sites of meaning-making, identity construction, multimodal communication, and critical literacy development, and how these processes are being reshaped in the age of AI.

Moving beyond reductive notions of “gamification,” the discussion will explore deeper sociocultural and epistemic dimensions of Digital Game-Based Learning, foregrounding agency, interpretation, and meaningful engagement in educational contexts. It will also examine how gaming communities function as rich environments for linguistic and semiotic development, reframing “victory” as communicative competence, identity formation, and networked participation. A central focus of the event will be the growing need for AI literacy—not merely as technical familiarity, but as a critical, reflective, and historically grounded engagement with intelligent systems that increasingly mediate human interaction, learning, and creativity.

By bringing these perspectives into dialogue, the event aims to open new directions for research and interdisciplinary collaboration at the intersection of digital cultures, literacy studies, and artificial intelligence.

Speakers

Dr. Earl Aguilera
Associate Professor, Teacher Education and Educational Technology
California State University, East Bay
Foundations of Digital Game-Based Learning: Insights for the Classroom and Beyond

Dr. Raúl Alberto Mora
Literacies in Second Languages Project Chair and Associate Professor, School of Education and Pedagogy
Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana
Victory in the Digital Multiverse: Bridging Gaming Literacies and the AI Frontier

Discussant

Dr. Zoi Traga Philippakos
Associate Professor, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Dr. Philippakos will synthesize the key themes of the presentations and guide the discussion toward future research trajectories and pedagogical implications.

The organizers warmly invite researchers, educators, graduate students, and all those interested in digital cultures and emerging technologies to join this conversation.

Organizers

Dr. Konstantinos Sipitanos, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Crete
Professor Eleni Katsarou, University of Crete