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The Web Site and Blog of

Vivek Santayana


Doctoral Candidate in English Literature at the University of Edinburgh.
Academia.edu: VivekSantayanaFlickr: @viveksantayanaTwitter: @viveksantayana
Vivek Santayana
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Category Archives: PhD Life

This post is about life as a PhD student on things that are mostly not to do with research or core academic work, such as teaching, extra-curricular things, or other aspects of graduate student life.

What Table-Top Gaming Taught Me About Teaching

20 Friday Nov 2020

Posted by V.S. in PhD Life

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bell hooks, D. Vincent Baker, Meguey Baker, Powered by the Apocalypse, Table-Top Roleplaying Games, Teaching

A reflection on how some aspects of contemporary play culture in table-top role-playing can be valuable practices for pedagogy

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The Uncritical Whiteness of Edinburgh Activism

01 Sunday Sep 2019

Posted by V.S. in Comment, PhD Life

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Activism, Brexit, Stop the Coup Protest

A brief look at the Stop the Coup protests in Edinburgh and the lack of representation of migrant and other precarious voices

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Back on Stage at the Edinburgh Fringe

02 Friday Aug 2019

Posted by V.S. in PhD Life

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Adventurers Wanted, Anna L. Tsing, Donna Haraway, Dungeons & Dragons

Performing with Adventurers Wanted for their 2019 Fringe show, Banishment

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A Natural 20 Performance: When a Dungeons & Dragons Session Becomes Sheer Brilliance

20 Wednesday Feb 2019

Posted by V.S. in PhD Life

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Dungeons & Dragons, Fan Culture, Nerd Culture, Parody, Star Wars

A recap of a recnet D&D session in which we went very much off the rails and parodied Star Wars and Star Wars fandom alike, in a story that truly exemplified performative sympoesis.

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A Year of Volunteering in the Mental Health Sector

09 Wednesday Jan 2019

Posted by V.S. in PhD Life

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Margaret Price, Mark Fisher, Mental Health, Volunteering

It has been roughly a year since I started volunteering at a mental health charity. This is a reflection on what motivated me to do so, and how these motivations have developed over the course of the past year.

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The Grand Finale of ‘Adventurers Wanted: Rebellion’ at the Edinburgh Fringe 2018

27 Monday Aug 2018

Posted by V.S. in PhD Life

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Adventurers Wanted, Dungeons & Dragons, Table-Top Roleplaying Games

The last four hours of the Adventures Wanted: Rebellion show at the Edinburgh Fringe, 2018, and how it was a fitting end to the adventure that brought out the best of table-top RPGs.

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Adventurers Wanted: Rebellion at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

12 Sunday Aug 2018

Posted by V.S. in PhD Life

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Adventurers Wanted, Dungeons & Dragons, Gabrielle Hecht, Public Engagement, Table-Top Roleplaying Games

At the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this year, I was on stage as part of a show called ‘Adventurers Wanted: Rebellion’ a couple of times, which was a live play of Dungeons & Dragons, combining table-top role-playing with improvised story-telling. These are some of my thoughts on how I managed to make my PhD research dovetail with the character I played.

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‘I Want to Tell You’: Beatles Songs for Talking About Mental Wellbeing

29 Sunday Jul 2018

Posted by V.S. in PhD Life

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A Day in the Life, George Harrison, John Lennon, Mental Health, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, The Beatles

When it’s difficult to initiate conversations about mental health, it might be easier to talk about mental health through the medium of Beatles songs. We will have to pretend, however, that none of these songs are about drugs. But many of the Beatles songs express complex and contradictory states of mind, which can be quite reassuring and illuminating.

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Hailsham Dark: Turning Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘Never Let Me Go’ into a Table-Top Role Playing Game

24 Tuesday Jul 2018

Posted by V.S. in PhD Life

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Cthulhu Dark, Graham Walmsley, Jane McGonigal, Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go, Table-Top Roleplaying Games

Over the last two months, I adapted Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘Never Let Me Go’ into a table-top role playing game, and I enjoyed myself immensely in the process. This is my account of what it was like adapting the novel, what difficulties I faced while GMing such a game, and what I gained from the whole thing.

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Whose ‘Home’ is it Coming to?: Supporting England in the World Cup

07 Saturday Jul 2018

Posted by V.S. in PhD Life

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England National Football Team, FIFA World Cup 2018, Football, Hostile Environment, Imagined Communities, Nationalism

I drew England in a sweepstake for the FIFA men’s World Cup. However, I find it really difficult to get behind supporting England, and I find the forms of imagined community and the internal contradictions within them hostile and difficult to negotiate.

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Recent Posts

  • What Table-Top Gaming Taught Me About Teaching
  • #RPGaDay2020: Days 1 to 7
  • Carrying it With You: Masculinity, Grief, and Table-Top Role-Playing in Disney/Pixar’s Onward
  • How Speculating about Beethoven’s Race Misses the Point
  • Comrades: a Revolutionary RPG by W.M. Akers

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