主讲人：埃斯本·阿尔塞斯（Espen Aarseth），香港城市大学创意媒体学院讲座教授、院长，丹麦皇家科学院及欧洲科学院院士。此前曾任哥本哈根信息技术大学教授、计算机游戏研究中心主任，更早则任教于卑尔根大学。他是期刊 Game Studies（2001 年创刊至今）的创刊主编，并主持欧洲研究理事会高级资助项目 MSG——“理解游戏”（Making Sense of Games，2016–2022）。近期，他策划了香港城市大学班戈画廊展览“游戏之力”（The Power of Play，2026 年 7–10 月）。
Espen Aarseth is chair professor of game studies and dean of the School of Creative Media at the City University of Hong Kong, and a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters and of the Academia Europaea. Earlier he was professor and head of the Center for Computer Games Research at the IT University of Copenhagen, and before that professor at the University of Bergen. He is founding editor of the journal Game Studies (2001 - ), and directed the European Research Council’s Advanced Grant project MSG – Making Sense of Games (2016-22). Most recently he curated the exhibition “The Power of Play”at CityUHKs Banga gallery (July-October 2026).
内容概要：角色（作为人的表征）无处不在：新闻、社交媒体、人工智能、历史、广告、体育、政治、神话与宗教等等，当然也包括通常的娱乐媒介。然而，角色本身——作为一般现象、作为普遍现象——并未得到研究。现在是时候把分置于不同媒介中的零散角色研究统合起来，建立一套关于角色与角色塑造的一般理论。
Characters (representations of persons) are everywhere, in the news, in social media, in AI, history, advertising, sport, politics, myth and religion, etc. etc., in addition to the usual entertainment media. But they are not studied as such, in general, and as a universal phenomenon. It is time to unite the fragmented research on characters in different media, and to build a general theory of characters and characterization.
