Instructor

About

Biography

James "Pigeon" Fielder joined CSU as an Instructor after retiring from the U.S. Air Force as a Lieutenant Colonel and Associate Professor of Political Science at the U.S. Air Force Academy. He is a Marine Corps University Emeritus Krulak Fellow (2021-2026), and is currently serving as a U.S. representative to NATO's SAS-219 High North Winter Storm 2030 project, German Army Wargaming Center Fellow,  co-owner and writer of roleplaying game company Mobius Worlds Publishing, and consults on organizational wargaming, crisis response exercises, and scenario planning.

Dr. Fielder researches interpersonal trust and emergent political processes through tabletop, live-action, and digital gaming as natural experiments. He also has almost three decades of experience designing, executing, and assessing training exercises and wargames, from small-group tabletop discussions to multi-day exercises engaging 5,000+ participants. He is also a managing editor of Active Learning in Political Science, associate editor of Simulation & Gaming, on the editorial board of The MORS Journal of Wargaming, was a TEDxMileHigh speaker on games, and has been interviewed on game-related topics by Reuters, USA Today, and NBC News.

He received his military callsign (or nickname) for having pet pigeons, including one bird, Heathcliff, that he's had since 1996!

Publications

2021 - 2026:

Fielder, James. D. 2026. Current World Problems, 2nd ed. Kendall Hunt.

Fielder, James D. 2026. “Worlds of the Liminal: Sovereignty, Structure, and Agency in Tabletop Roleplaying Games.” In Wake, Chloé Alexandra (Ed). Rituals of Play. Manchester Metropolitan University and Dark Arts Research Collective.

Glasgow, Derek, Mark Harvey, Ryan Gibb, and James D. Fielder (Eds.). 2026. The Power of Short Games and Active Learning in the Political Science Classroom: Beating the Clock. Routledge.

Fielder, James D. 2025. “Innovation in PME Wargaming for Innovation in Warfare.” In Joanna Siekiera (Ed.). Evolution on Demand: The Changing Roles of the U.S. Marine Corps in Twenty-first Century Conflicts and Beyond. Marine Corps University Press.

Harvey, Mark, James D. Fielder, and Ryan Gibb. 2025. “Making Time for Games: Long Versus Short IR Activities in the Classroom.” In Frueh, Jamie, Jacqui Ala, Michael Murphy, and Paul Diehl (Eds.). The Palgrave Handbook on the Pedagogy of International Relations Theory. Palgrave-Macmillan.

Harvey, Mark, James D. Fielder, and Ryan G (Eds.). 2022. Simulations and Games in the Political Science Classroom: Games without Frontiers. Taylor & Francis.

Fielder, James D. 2022. “Ghosts of the Titanomachy: Structure, Commitment, Economics, and Risk as Causal Mechanisms in an Online Battle.” Simulation & Gaming. Vol 53, No 3: 265-284. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/10468781221075659

Fielder, James D. 2021. “Cyber Security Policy in Kenya.” In Romaniuk, Scott N., and Mary Manjikian (Eds.). Routledge Companion to Global Cyber-Security Strategy. Routledge.

First Generation Story

I have my mother's sacrifices to forever thank for being first gen. She was a single parent until I was 16 and scraped together every dime she had to send me and my twin brother to college. She also worked in The Washington Post's classified ads department for 36 years and, lacking reliable childcare options, regularly brought us the Post where we met numerous journalists, printers, and even editorial cartoonists such as Herblock. Between being immersed in the newspaper world and watching the evening news with my grandfather ("Pops"), I was eagerly drawn into the narrative of current events, politics, and history as it happened. I joined the U.S. Army after college, partially to offset college loan burdens my mother took on, never thinking I'd make a career of the military--if someone told me on the first day of Army Basic Training that I'd retire as an Air Force officer teaching at the U.S. Air Force Academy, I'd have told them they were nuts. My mother now lives near my brother (a Red Hat Consulting Architect) in the sleepy oyster town of Rock Hall, MD. She's definitely earned her roosting!

Courses

  • Game Design Handout

    Syllabus

    I created this handout for fellow Colorado State University Faculty. I use the game design checklist for every game, exercise, and scenario I run and it works like a charm! The handout also includes recommended readings, software solutions, and a broad selection of games to improve your mechanics repertoire. Feel free to share… and keep me in mind if you need a Game Master. :-)