PhD Home Page - Wargaming Urban Conflict

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 site when I produce new reports (e.g. working papers, draft chapters, game AARs etc) and a twice yearly PhD Newsletter, and then to a major update and [[term_sheets|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.

Urban Wargaming Resources

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
AI Tools for Gaming - ones that I've built, generic but includes a few useful for urban 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 of one that's not on there please email me at david at burden dot name. Also mostly mirrored at BoardGameGeek Urban Wargames GeekList.
My Substack - where I'm posting early draft/working papers and other thought pieces, only ~1-2 per quarter

You can also chat to Virtual UrbanWargamer - a chatbot based on my PhD work. My goal is to get it to take my viva for me!

Thesis and Research Related Items

My PhD Proposal - gives a good idea of what I initially thought I was going to do!
Rolling Synopsis and Extended Table of Contents of the Chapters in the PhD - will update each year - a better idea of what I'm currently doing than the proposal
My first presentation/video on Wargaming Urban Conflict, an introduction to the topic and my PhD
Newsletters - a twice yearly summary of key achievements and plan for the next period
An Urban Wargaming Bibliography - I'm generating far too many references to list them all, so here are some of the best. See also my 50 Urban Warfare Works in 50 Years poster.
Research Ethics

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

Introduction
A History and Historiography of Urban Warfare
An Analysis of Urban Warfare
Urban Wargaming
Analysing Urban Wargames
Validity, Experimentation and Evaluation Planning
Game Selection, Design & Summative Results
Civil Effects (Population and Infrastructure) Mechanics
3D Terrain & Warfighting Mechanics
Summative Discussion and Conclusion

I'm currently (Sep 25) working through a second draft of the whole thesis, and will probably post the draft sections into the above list as I complete the drafts. All comments welcome!

Related Experimentation

Although not directly related to the PhD I'm also interested and working on two technical areas related to wargaming (and each related to the other areas of my interests covered on this site):

Extended Reality Wargaming
Conversational AI and Wargaming