In early 2022 I started a PhD in wargaming under John Curry at Bath Spa, he of History of Wargaming Project fame. I'm doing the PhD part-time, so will probably take 5-6 years. After some discussions with John and kicking various more hobby/generic ideas around we decided that Urban Conflict was the best bet as it a) built on work I was already doing for MOD, b) is a key current area of interest for the world's militaries and c) hasn't been over-researched academically. As with all PhD the first year is probably going to all about reading (and playing) widely and deciding on a more precise scope and research question but for now my (updated) provisional title is:

What are the unique challenges in trying to wargame modern military operations in an increasingly urbanised world and (how) can they be better addressed?

Now that I'm using Obsidian for my day-to-day note taking I'll mainly update this blog when I produce new reports (eg game AARs, battle summaries, short papers), and then to a major update and Term Sheet one a term, so it won't be quite the scratch pad I originally thought but will still be pointing people to things I'm working on and using it to consolidate game reports, research etc.

• My Urban Games - games and playtests I'm developing for the PhD
• Papers and Presentations - my PhD related public papers and presentations
• Recommended Urban Wargames - an evolving list of recommended urban wargames
• Urban Wargame Reviews - fairly formal AARs to help down select games to focus on
• Tools and Resources - things I build (or curate) to support the PhD, including diagrams, models etc
• Wargaming and AI - various side projects on the use of AI (mainly LLMs) in wargaming

• Urban Wargames Database - of course a good starting point is knowing what has been done before, so here's my growing list of urban wargames. If you know on one that's not on there please email me at david at burden dot name.
• BoardGameGeek Urban Wargames GeekList - this mirrors the database with all games from the database that have a BGG page
• My Substack - where I'm posting early draft/working papers and other thought pieces, only ~1-2 per quarter

• My PhD Proposal - gives a good idea of what I initial thought I was going to do!
• Rolling Synposis of the Chapters in the PhD - will update each term - better idea of what I'm doing than the proposal
• My first presentation/video on Wargaming Urban Conflict, an introduction to the topic and my PhD
• Term Sheets - not that kind (I wish) but a termly summary of key achievements and plan for the next term
• Research Areas of Interest - particular aspects of the research, and related areas, that are catching my interest
• References - a dump of my current references, not split thematically
• Bibliography
• Research Ethics

The main sections of the Thesis are likely to be something like:

• PhD Introduction
• Urban and City Development
• History of Urban Combat
• Characteristics of Urban Warfare
• Wargame Design Theory
• Urban Wargames
• Gap Analysis
• Novel Urban Wargame Designs
• Evaluation Strategies
• Novel Game Evaluation
• Guide to Urban Wargame Design
• Conclusions

• Battle Summaries - summaries of the key battles I've found of interest
• My Blog Posts tagged 'PhD' - mostly relevant informal AARs
• https://twitter.com/UrbanWargamer - My @UrbanWargamer twitter feed
• Twitter Urban Wargaming List - built this for my own use but some people seem to be following it, suggestions for additions welcome

I'm also interested in the whole idea of doing a PhD “in public” and the use of Wikis/Data Gardens/Digital Gardens/Second Brains/Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) tools etc to support them - so here are a few notes on PhD Wikis.

You can contact me at: david.burden21@bathspa.ac.uk