About Sarah Lynne Bowman
Sarah Lynne Bowman is a scholar, professor, tutor, editor, event organizer, and game designer. She is currently an Associate Professor at the Department of Game Design at Uppsala University, where she teaches a Certificate Track and Master’s Programme on the use of role-playing games as vehicles for personal and social change. She is a founding member of the Transformative Play Initiative research group.
Bowman received her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Dallas in 2008. She also holds a B.S. and M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin in Radio-TV-Film. In 2010, McFarland Press published her dissertation as The Functions of Role-playing Games: How Participants Create Community, Solve Problems, and Explore Identity. From 2020-2022, she served as Program Coordinator for Peace & Conflict Studies at Austin Community College, where she currently teaches classes in the Humanities. She has also taught English and Communication at multiple institutions. In addition, Bowman has several years of tutoring experience and works as a freelance editor.
Bowman publishes regularly and travels internationally to present her thoughts on the practice of role-playing games. She served as an editor for The Wyrd Con Companion Book from 2012-2015. Bowman is currently is a Coordinating Editor for the International Journal of Role-playing and a Managing Editor for Nordiclarp.org. She was the lead organizer for the Living Games Conference 2016 and helped coordinate the Role-playing and Simulation in Education Conference at Texas State University’s St. David’s School of Nursing. Bowman also served a central role in organizing iterations of those two conferences in 2018. She is currently co-organizing the Transformative Play Initiative Seminar 2022: Role-playing, Culture, and Heritage in Visby, Sweden.
Bowman’s current research interests include investigating the transformative potential of role-playing games in therapeutic, educational, and recreational contexts; examining social conflict within role-playing communities; applying depth psychology and counseling theories to role-playing studies; exploring intimacy, identity, and spirituality in games; theorizing about the phenomenology of the role-playing experience; and connecting the enactment of role-playing characters with other creative phenomena, such as drag and improvisational acting. In addition, she is a passionate advocate for emotional safety in role-playing spaces and has worked on the safety committees of several larp events. In order to create safer spaces in larp communities, Bowman regularly designs workshops, debriefs, Codes of Conducts, and consent mechanics.
