Alexander Johan de Voogt or simply Alex de Voogt (

Baarn Baarn () is a municipality and a town in the Netherlands, near Hilversum in the province of Utrecht. The municipality of Baarn The municipality of Baarn consists of the following towns: Baarn, Eembrugge, Lage Vuursche. The town of Baarn Ba ...

, 3 May 1970) is a Dutch researcher and associate professor at

Drew University Drew University is a private university in Madison, New Jersey. Drew has been nicknamed the "University in the Forest" because of its wooded campus. As of fall 2020, more than 2,200 students were pursuing degrees at the university's three scho ...

, who worked as a curator of African Ethnology at the

American Museum of Natural History The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. In Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 26 inter ...

and best known for his work on the history and distribution of traditional

mancala The mancala games are a family of two-player turn-based strategy board games played with small stones, beans, or seeds and rows of holes or pits in the earth, a board or other playing surface. The objective is usually to capture all or some ...

games. He is also editor of '' Board Game Studies'', the main scientific journal on the history of

board game Board games are tabletop games that typically use . These pieces are moved or placed on a pre-marked board (playing surface) and often include elements of table, card, role-playing, and miniatures games as well. Many board games feature a comp ...

s. De Voogt began studying mancala in the 1990s, while he was in

Zanzibar Zanzibar (; ; ) is an insular semi-autonomous province which united with Tanganyika in 1964 to form the United Republic of Tanzania. It is an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of many small islands ...

studying Swahili. At the time, he began analyzing the rules and strategies of the Bao mancala game (one of the most complex mancala games) by interviewing acknowledged

i "Bao masters". In 1995 he published his

PhD thesis A thesis ( : theses), or dissertation (abbreviated diss.), is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings.International Standard ISO 7144: ...

''Limits of the Mind: Towards a Characterization of Bao Mastership'' where he analyzed the intellectual abilities required to master the Bao game. The work on Bao set the basis for all subsequent research activities by De Voogt. Among the many mancala games De Voogt has been collecting information on and studying there are Katro (

Madagascar Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...

Owela Owela, also referred to by the Khoekhoe language loanword hus, () is the Oshiwambo name of a traditional mancala board game played by the Nama people, Herero people, Rukwangali speakers, and other ethnic groups from Namibia (and its Southern A ...

(

Namibia Namibia (, ), officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and ea ...

Warri The city of Warri is an oil hub within South-South Nigeria and houses an annex of the Delta State Government House. Warri City is one of the major hubs of the petroleum industry in Nigeria. Warri and her twin city, Uvwie are the commercial c ...

(

Barbados Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, in the Caribbean region of the Americas, and the most easterly of the Caribbean Islands. It occupies an area of and has a population of about 287,000 (2019 estimate). ...

), Hawalis (

Oman Oman ( ; ar, عُمَان ' ), officially the Sultanate of Oman ( ar, سلْطنةُ عُمان ), is an Arabian country located in southwestern Asia. It is situated on the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, and spans the mouth of t ...

), Ohvalhu (

Maldives Maldives (, ; dv, ދިވެހިރާއްޖެ, translit=Dhivehi Raajje, ), officially the Republic of Maldives ( dv, ދިވެހިރާއްޖޭގެ ޖުމްހޫރިއްޔާ, translit=Dhivehi Raajjeyge Jumhooriyyaa, label=none, ), is an archipelag ...

), Mangaley (

Syria Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...

) and

Olinda Keliya Olinda () is a historic city in Pernambuco, Brazil, in the Northeast Region. It is located on the country's northeastern Atlantic Ocean coast, in the Metropolitan Region of Recife, the state capital. It has a population of 393,115 people, covers ...

(

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...

Selected writings

*''Limits of the mind: Towards a characterisation of the bao mastership'', 1995 *''New approaches to board games research: asian origins and future perspectives'', 1995 *''Mancala Board Games'', British Museum Press, Londra 1997 *''Seeded players: East African game of Bao'', Natural History, New York, 1998. *''Distribution of mancala board games: A methodological Inquiry'', «Board Games Studies» 2, 1999, pp. 104–114. *(with H. H. L. M. Donkers and J. W. H. M Uiterwijk) ''Human versus machine problem-solving: Winning openings in Dakon'', in «Board Games Studies», 3, pp. 79–88, 2000 *(with H. H. L. M. Donkers and J. W. H. M. Uiterwijk) ''Mancala games: Topics in mathematics and artificial intelligence'', in ''Proceedings of the Colloquium Board Games in Academia IV'', Fribourg: Edition Universitaire 2001, pp. 133–146. *(with F. Gobet and J. Retschitzki) ''Moves in Mind: The Psychology of Board Games''. Psychology Press, Hove 2004. * "A question of excellence, a century of African masters". Africa World Press, Trenton NJ 2005. * "Mancala games and their suitability for players with visual impairments", Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness 104(11):725–731. * (with W. Crist and A.-E. Dunn-Vaturi) "Ancient Egyptian at Play: Board Games Across Borders", Bloomsbury Academic Press, London, 2016.

External links

Alex de Voogt at the American Museum of Natural History
{{DEFAULTSORT:Voogt, Alexander de 1970 births Living people Dutch psychologists Tabletop game writers Mancala People from Baarn Leiden University alumni Erasmus University Rotterdam alumni University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa alumni