Nico Valdivia Hennig and Dr. Isabel Pérez-Ramos will lead conversations featuring their SPJF projects: “Andean Futures: Collaborative Play-Creation” and “Dismantling the Wasteocene through Solidarity.”
Nico Valdivia Hennig (he/they) is an award-winning Chilean game designer, ludic activist, and cultural studies researcher with over a decade of experience in game design. Currently, they are a PhD student in Hispanic Studies at the University of California, Riverside, with a designated emphasis in Speculative Fiction and Cultures of Science. Their research focuses on ludic activism, game design, and game production in the Global South, particularly in Latin America.
Nico co-founded Niebla Games, which has launched both board and video games for PC and mobile platforms. In 2022, their studio was selected for Google’s Indie Games Accelerator program. Notable accolades include “Best Game Design” at EVA Córdoba 2019 in Argentina, “Best Chilean Studio of 2021,” and recent nominations for the Explorer Award at the AMaze/Berlin Festival of Experimental Game Art 2024, as well as for Best Social Matters Game & Best Diversity Game at the BIG Festival/Gamescom Latam 2024 in São Paulo, Brazil. Additionally, Nico has extensive experience lecturing on game design and narrative within game development programs in Chile. They are also a co-founder of Río Junto, a Latin American cultural exchange hub, and a founding member of Ludocrítica, the Chilean Critical Games Studies Network.
“Andean Futures: Collaborative Play-Creation” is a project centered on empowering Andean youth from the Pisac community in Peru’s Sacred Valley of the Incas to envision and create digital futures rooted in their cultural heritage. This project seeks to address the underrepresentation of spaces for indigenous communities to actively participate in discussions about futures and traditions, such as indigenous futurism, which has been underexplored in Latin America. By fostering the creation of micro-games that reflect the distinctive Andean worldview, the project utilizes accessible, open-source tools to facilitate a collaborative process where tradition and technology intersect. This initiative offers a speculative exploration of potential futures shaped by the perspectives of indigenous and marginalized communities, aiming to inspire broader recognition and appreciation of indigenous voices in global conversations about the future through interactive media.
Isabel Pérez-Ramos (she/her/hers) is a Ramón y Cajal Research Fellow at the University of Oviedo (grant RYC2021-031353-I funded by MCIN/AEI /10.13039/501100011033 and by “European Union Next Generation EU/PRTR”). She is a member of the multidisciplinary research groups Intersections (University of Oviedo), and GIECO (Instituto Franklin, UAH).
Isabel’s research focuses on narrative representations of environmental injustices, mostly in Chicanx and US Southwestern literature, as well as in cli-fi and speculative fiction.
She is co-editor of Toward an Eco-Social Transition: Transatlantic Environmental Humanities (UAH, 2021). Her research has been published in journals such as International Journal of English Studies IJES, MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment and Environmental Humanities, as well as in numerous book chapters.
She is Book Review Editor of Ecozon@ and a member of the Advisory Board of the European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture and Environment.
“Dismantling the Wasteocene through Solidarity” centers on the ways in which decolonial solidarities are mobilized through narrative strategies in speculative fiction by Chicanx authors to challenge socioenvironmental injustices.
Please enter the Indiana Historical Society through the Welcome Center to be directed to the lecture and receive parking validation.
We would like to thank the Indiana Historical Society for hosting this event and Big Car Collaborative for supporting the Speculative Play and Just Futurities residency as part of a housing program for visiting artists working in different genres staying and working at the Tube Factory campus all year.
The Speculative Play and Just Futurities program leverages narrative storytelling and creative world-building in speculative writing and design, including science fiction, fantasy, gaming, and new digital media like virtual reality, to challenge oppression and reimagine our world. It focuses on creating forums for discussing and theorizing literature to envision just futures. Central to SPJF is a residency for emerging scholars and creators, fostering intellectual and creative growth. SPJF also hosts weekly colloquia for students and faculty, featuring resident interactions and collaborative learning opportunities.
Speculative Play and Just Futurities is made possible through the generous support of the Mellon Foundation. SPJF is a collaboration between the IU Indianapolis Arts and Humanities Institute, the Center for Africana Studies and Culture, and the Ray Bradbury Center. Learn more about the SPJF residency by visiting our website: https://www.spjf.org/.
