dr. L.A.W.J. (Lars) de Wildt

For full CV, see here (updated February 2025).

1. Positions
2023—: Assistant Professor (tenured), University of Groningen
2020–'23: Postdoctoral Research Associate, AHRC Project (PI: Knight, P.) “Everything Is Connected: Conspiracy Theories in the Age of the Internet” (U. Manchester, Amsterdam, KCL, KUL)
2014–'20: Mandaatassistent, KU Leuven

Visiting positions: Heidelberg (2025), Jyväskyla (2024), Bremen (2024), Tampere (2021), Montréal (2019), Deakin (2017).

2. Grants
2025: NWO Veni “Reorienting Global Gaming: how Western games adapt to Chinese worldviews.”
2025: Käte Hamburger CAPAS Fellowship.
2024: JYU Fellowship. “A Cultural Sociology of Awkwardne(rd)ss,”
2024: ZeMKI Visiting Research Fellowship
2020: Postdoctoral Mandate “Truth is Broken: Online conspiracy theories”
2018: Porticus Grant (with Pollefeyt, D., Bieringer, R., Aupers, S., de Wildt, L., Steegen, M., Androsova, V., Devogelaere, C.)
2018: IGDA [International Game Developers Association] Scholarship.
2017: JuMo/600408 Junior Mobility Programme.

3. Publications
Book: de Wildt, L. (2023). The Pop Theology of Videogames. Producing and Playing with Religion. Amsterdam University Press.
Open Access. doi:10.5117/9789463729864.

Special Issue: de Wildt, L., Hammar, E., Mukherjee, S., Pelletier, C. (eds.) Games of Empire 10 Years Later (Special Issue). Games & Culture.

Publications (chronologically)
2025: Xu, H. & de Wildt, L. (2025). Grieving World of Warcraft’s Chinese Server Shutdown. Global Media and China.
2025: de Wildt, L. (2025). Hidden Monsters: Conspiracy Aesthetics in Videogames. In Meriläinen, M, J. Blom, L. Hassan & S. Stang (eds.) Monsters in Videogames. Amsterdam University Press.
2025: de Wildt, L. (accepted). All the World’s a Stage: The ironic worlding of ‘Birds Aren’t Real’. In Lammes, S., F.W. Korsten, et al. (eds.) Playing Politics: Media Platforms Making Worlds.

2024: de Wildt, L. & Aupers, S. (2024). Participatory Conspiracy Culture: Believing, doubting and playing with conspiracy theories on Reddit. Convergence.
2024: de Wildt, L., Grusauskaite, K. & Aupers, S. (2024). Encoding/Decoding Entertainment Media. In Bowman, N.D. (ed.) Entertainment Media and Communication (DeGruyter Handbooks of Communication Science). DeGruyter Mouton.
2024: de Wildt, L. (2024). Video-Game Religion beyond the Anthropocene. In: DiTommaso, J. Crossley, A. Lockhart, and R. Wagner (eds.). End-Game: Apocalyptic Video Games, Contemporary Society, and Digital Media Culture. Berlin: W. de Gruyter.

2023: de Wildt, L., & Aupers, S. (2023). Marketable Religion: How Game Company Ubisoft Commodified Religion for a Global Audience. Journal of Consumer Culture. 
2023: de Wildt, L. (2023). Franchised Esotericism: Assassin’s Creed’s Religious Perennialism as a Marketing Strategy. In: Marcato, L. and F. Schniz (eds.) Fictional Practice of Spirituality, Vol. 1. Bielefeld: transcript.
2023: Šisler, V., de Wildt, L., Abbas, S. (2023). Breaking Barriers: The Emergence of a Videogame Culture and Industry in the Arab World. In: G. Khiabany, J.F. Khalil, T. Guaaybess, B. Yesil (Eds.), Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East. London: Wiley-Blackwell. 

2022: Harambam, J., Grusauskaite, K., & de Wildt, L. (2022). Poly-Truth, or the Limits of Pluralism: Popular Debates on Conspiracy Theories in a Post-Truth Era. Public Understanding of Science.

2021: Hammar, E., de Wildt L., Mukherjee, S. & Pelletier, Caroline. (2021). Politics of Production: Videogames 10 years after Games of Empire. Games and Culture, 16(3), 287-293.
2021: de Wildt, L. & Aupers, S. (2021). Eclectic Religion: The flattening of religious cultural heritage in videogames. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 27(3), 312-330.
2021: Aupers, S., & de Wildt, L. (2021). Digital Religion. in Rohlinger, D. & Sobieraj, S. (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Sociology and Digital Media. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2021: Aupers, S., & de Wildt, L. (2021). ‘Down the Rabbit Hole’: Heterodox Science on the Internet. in Houtman, D., Aupers, S., & Laermans, R. (eds.) Science under Siege: Contesting the Secular Religion of Scientism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan (Cultural Sociology series).
2021: de Wildt, L., Grusauskaite, K. (2021). Illuminati. In: J. Harambam, M. Kuiper, R. Vaessen (Eds.), The Truth is Out There, Chapt. 19, (306-309). Amsterdam: Volt. ISBN: 9789021430171.

2020: de Wildt, L., Apperley, T., Clemens, J., Fordyce, R., Mukherjee, S. (2020). (Re-)Orienting the Avatar in Cultural Discourse. Games and Culture, 15(8), 962-981.
2020: de Wildt, L., & Aupers, S. (2020). Pop Theology: Forum Discussions on Religion in Videogames. Information, Communication & Society, 23(10): 1444-1462.
2020: de Wildt, L. (2020). Opening the Shinto Box: The Mixing of Religions, Traditions and Fictions in JRPG. Proceedings of Replaying Japan 2020.
2020: de Wildt, L. (2020). Post-apocalypse, in Possamai, A. & Blasi, A.J. (eds.) The SAGE Encyclopedia of Sociology of Religion. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. Vol. 2, pp. 593-595.
2020: de Wildt, L. (2020). Qualitative Data Analysis Software, in Possamai, A. & Blasi, A.J. (eds.) The SAGE Encyclopedia of Sociology of Religion. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. Vol. 2, pp. 642-644.

2019: Lopez, L.L.L., de Wildt, L. & Moodie, N. (2019). “I Don’t Think You Are Going to Have Any Aborigines in Your World:” Minecrafting Terra Nullius. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 40(8), 1037-1054.
2019: de Wildt, L., Aupers, S. (2019). Playing the Other: Role-Playing Religion in Video Games. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 22(5-6), 867-884.
2019: de Wildt, L. (2019). “Everything is true; nothing is permitted:” Utopia, Religion and Conspiracy in Assassin’s Creed. in Freyermuth, G.S. & Schmidt, H.C. (eds.) Playing Utopia: Clash of Realities. Bielefeld: Transcript.
2019: de Wildt L. (2019). Entwining the National and Personal: Art Spiegelman’s Post-9/11 Shapeshifting. In: Folio J., Luhning H. (Eds.), Body Horror and Shapeshifting: A Multidisciplinary Exploration (pp. 123-136). Leiden, Boston: Brill.
2019: de Wildt L., Aupers S., Krassen C., Coanda I. (2019). ‘Things Greater than Thou’: Post-Apocalyptic Religion in Games. In: Bosman F. (Ed..), The Sacred & the Digital: Critical Depictions of Religions in Video Games (pp. 30-49). Basel, Switzerland: MDPI.

2018: de Wildt, L., Aupers, S., Krassen, C., & Coanda, I. (2018). “'Things Greater than Thou:’ Post-Apocalyptic Religion in Games.” Religions, 9(6), 169.
2018: Butt, M., de Wildt, L., Kowert, R., Sandovar, A. (2018). Homo Includens: Surveying DiGRA’s Diversity. ToDiGRA Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association, 4(1): 67-104.
2018: Aupers, S., Schaap, J., de Wildt, L. (2018). Qualitative in-depth interviews: Studying religious meaning-making in MMOs. Methods for Studying Video Games and Religion. Šisler, V., Radde-Antweiler, K. & Zeiler, X. (eds.). Routledge Studies in Religion and Digital Culture series. London: Routledge.

2017: Butt M-A., de Wildt L., Kowert R., Sandovar A. (2017). Homo Includens: Surveying DiGRA’s Diversity. Digital Games Research Association 2017, Gaming the Systems: Diversity Workshop.
2017: de Wildt, L., & Aupers, S. (2017). Bibles and BioShock: Affording Religious Discussion on Video Game Forums. In Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (pp. 463-475). ACM.

2015: de Wildt, L. (2015). Rituals of Reading: Ergodic ways of reading through contemporary technology. TXT Magazine, 2 (1), 97-103.
2014: de Wildt, L. (2014). Precarious Play: To Be or Not to Be Stanley. Press Start Journal, 1 (1), 1-20.

2014: de Wildt, L. (2014). Enstranging Play: Distinguishing Playful Subjecthood from Governance. In Proceedings of the Philosophy of Computer Games Conference 2014 (art.nr. 2).
2014: de Wildt, L. (2014) “Entwining the National and Personal: Art Spiegelman's Post-9/11 Shapeshifting.” In: Folio J., Luhning H. (Eds.), At the Interface series: Body Horror and Shapeshifting. Oxford, UK: Inter-Disciplinary.net, 125-136. 1st Global Conference Shapeshifters: Transformations, Hybridity and Identity. Athens, Greece, 1-3 Nov 2013.

For full CV, see here (updated February 2025).