In this talk, Daniel will discuss the public engagement branch of the Literary History of Medicine Project which focussed on developing board and card games on the subject of Medieval Islamic Science and Medicine and was run in collaboration with the History of Science Museum’s Education Officers, Chris Parkin and Sukie Trowles. Daniel will provide an overview of the project, present the games that were made and played with the public, and look at the wider process of creating games, and how they can be used as a vehicle to engage the general public with the outputs of academic research.

Daniel Burt, ICT Officer at The Khalili Research Centre (the University’s centre for the study of Islamic Art & Material Culture) has spent the last 15 years of his career working in the field of Digital Humanities developing software for museum collections, image archives, and databases to aid with academic research. Outside of work, he has been developing board games for almost 30 years, often in collaboration with established board game designer, Maurice Suckling (Freeman’s Farm, Hidden Strike: American Revolution), who was also involved in the Board Games & Medieval Medicine Project, their most recent collaboration being as a team for the inaugural ConSim Game Jam which tasked them with developing a game from scratch in 72 hours.