Leo Baik is an undergraduate student with a BSc specializing in Psychology and finishing a degree in Secondary Education. He is currently a member of the Re:Cognition lab at the University of Alberta led by Dr. Ben Dyson. Games have been an important part of his life since his early childhood that has led to various unique experiences. He is interested in the application of various games in research and education as he believes that games have a lot of potential value in such fields that have not been fully unlocked or utilized. In particular, he believes that games that were designed for the purpose of being fun can be utilized and/or repurposed in the classroom and in the lab while being fun, engaging and intrinsically motivating for everyone involved.

Neal Baker, MA is a business librarian at Purdue University. His publications include scholarly anthology book chapters on tabletop RPG product lines, the LEGO Middle-earth product portfolio, and Star Trek: Voyager, as well as peer-reviewed articles on genre topics like Canadian science fiction, the Marvel Comics Alpha Flight series, and anime.

 

Sabina Belc, MS is a biotechnologist by her formal education, but since 2008 she has been working as a youth worker, facilitator and experiential educator. Her main passions are educational games (especially escape rooms) as a tool for improving civic literacy, game design-based learning, media literacy, youth dialogue processes and, in recent years, digital youth work.

 

Pawel Bornstedt, MA was born in Bielsko-Biala in Poland and holds a Masters of Education (2022) from Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany. He teaches German and History at Rhein Gymnasium in Sinzig, Germany.

 

 

Joseph Dumit, PhD is an anthropologist of passions, performance, brains, computers, AI, games, bodies, drugs and facts. At the University of California Davis, he is Chair of Performance Studies, Professor of Science & Technology Studies, and Professor of Anthropology. He is also Professor of Interdisciplinary Data Collaborations at the Interacting Minds Center, Aarhus University, Denmark. He is co-founder of the ModLab for games research at UC Davis, and member of the Center for Language and Artificial Intelligence (CLAI) at Aarhus U. He is author of two books: Picturing Personhood: Brain Scans & Biomedical America (Princeton 2004) and Drugs for Life: How Pharmaceutical Companies Define Our Health (Duke 2012).

Ben Dyson, PhD (he/him) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Alberta, Canada, and director of the Re:Cognition Lab. Ben’s work examines the intersections between empirical science and analog games, including the use of game spaces in revealing the dynamics of competitive decision-making, and the hidden scientific principles found within commercially available board and card games. The lab also develops entirely novel games that further help our understanding of human cognition. To this end, the lab is currently prototyping the computational card game Total Chaos, which explores the mysteries of negative numbers and zero.

Peter D. Evan, PhD is a professor at Seikei University in Tokyo. He has a BA in Medieval Germanic Literature from Indiana University, an MA in Medieval History from Durham University, and a PhD in Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic from the University of Cambridge. His research primarily focuses on late Anglo-Saxon monasticism, liturgical commemoration, and codicology, but he is also interested in conceptions and portrayals of the medieval in tabletop roleplaying games, and the history of tabletop roleplaying games and  wargaming in Japan.

Brian McKenzie, PhD is an Associate Professor at Maynooth University, Ireland, where he serves as the subject leader for its First Year program, Critical Skills and also teaches a graduate micro-
credential on RPG writing. He has contributed to several Dungeons & Dragons projects for Goodman Games, and is the author of two forthcoming adventures (also from Goodman Games). His academic research examines game studies, writing, and critical pedagogy.