Mads Grønne Bärenholdt is conducting research on social design, using various design games to carry out ethnographic fieldwork in vulnerable communities. His work places a strong emphasis on sensitivity and care for participants, ensuring that their well-being is prioritized throughout the research process. Currently, Bärenholdt is finishing a PhD project at the University of Southern Denmark that explores the perception of loneliness and how it becomes visible through interactions and narratives during gameplay with different types of games.
PB Berge, PhD (they/her) is a media scholar, game maker breaker, self-described ludoarsonist, and an Assistant Professor of Experimental Game Design at the University of Alberta. She is the Director of the Discord Academic Research Community, The CRYPT Lab, and a co-founder of Tabletop Research in Practice. Their research falls at the intersection of trans game studies and feminist platform studies and can be found in or is forthcoming at Game Studies, JCMS, New Media & Society, Games & Culture, and elsewhere.
Brandon Blackburn (he/him) is a 4th-year doctoral candidate in Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Irvine. His research examines intimacy with and within the fractures of rigid structures of play. By looking at depictions of monstrosity and affects of horror through the lenses of race and queerness in playable media, he seeks to articulate both resonances and slippages between players and the games they play. His work has been published in TOPIA and Amherst College Press.
Edmond Y. Chang, PhD is an Associate Professor of English at Ohio University. His areas of research include technoculture, race/gender/sexuality, queer game studies, feminist media studies, popular culture, and 20/21C American literature, particularly speculative literatures of color and games of color. He is the creator of Tellings, a high fantasy tabletop RPG, and Archaea, a live-action role-playing game. He is the Editor-in-Chief for Analog Game Studies.
Megan Condis, PhD is an assistant professor of Communication Studies at Texas Tech University. Her book, Gaming Masculinity: Trolls, Fake Geeks, and the Gendered Battle for Online Culture was published by the University of Iowa Press in 2018. She is a Senior Editor of Analog Game Studies.
Kaelan Doyle-Myerscough (they/he) is a PhD student in Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago. Kaelan’s dissertation research centers on the theory, politics and practice of worldbuilding. As part of their critical work, Kaelan develops games that put into practice radical and experimental worldbuilding methods; their games have been showcased in Toronto, Hong Kong and Japan. Kaelan’s scholarly work has been published in InVisible Culture and the Dark Arts Journal, and they have served on the Board of Directors for the Queerness and Games Conference (QGCon) since 2019.
Susan Haarman, PhD is Associate Director at Loyola University Chicago’s Center for Engaged Learning, Teaching, and Scholarship where she facilitates faculty development and the university’s service-learning program. She holds a PhD in Cultural and Educational Policy Studies and is also a licensed therapist. Dr. Haarman’s interdisciplinary research focuses on the intersections of social justice education and community-based learning, but her heart belongs to her work on John Dewey’s educational and democratic philosophy and the capacity of tabletop role-playing games as formative tools for civic identity and imagination. She has been running a three-year campaign that takes inspiration from the history of Chicago, which is always more fantastical than fiction.
Luke Hernandez is Ph.D. student studying Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication at the University of Texas at Dallas. His research lies at the intersection of Critical Game Studies, Latinx Studies, and Queer Media Studies. His work focuses on how online marginalized communities thrive throughout games spaces. He is an Editorial Intern for Analog Game Studies. Luke is also an Aquarius.
Percival Hornak, MFA (he/him) is a dramaturg, playwright, and podcast producer based in Brooklyn, NY. He holds an MFA in Dramaturgy from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; his research studies trans play, experiential performance, collaborative authorship, and impossibility. His writing has appeared on HowlRound Theatre Commons, in Dramaturgy and History: Staging the Archive, and in the Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays Vol 2. He serves as Literary Manager of Stroller Scene, a new play development and advocacy organization, and co-produces the podcast Dungeons + Drama Nerds, which examines the intersection of theatre and tabletop role-playing games. You can see more of his work at percivalhornak.com.
Shelly Jones, PhD is a Professor of English at SUNY Delhi, where they teach classes in transmedia storytelling, mythology, and writing. Their research examines games through the lenses of intersectional feminism and disability studies. A Pushcart nominee and Best Microfiction finalist, their creative works have been published widely. They are a Senior Editor of Analog Game Studies.
Beatrix (Bea) Livesey-Stephens (she/her) is an MPhil candidate and researcher at Abertay University, where she studies player calibration in intimacy games and researches European gaming clusters. She received her MA (Hons) in Language & Linguistics from the University of Aberdeen. Her research interests lie at the intersections of linguistics, sex and relationship education, accessibility, and ethics, in which she attempts to map the limits of transformative play and ludic vulnerability. She is particularly interested in using frameworks informed by asexual embodiment to better understand player ethics both in and beyond the play space. She is also an Editorial Intern for Analog Game Studies.
Evan Torner, PhD is Associate Professor of German Studies and Film & Media Studies at the University of Cincinnati, where he also serves as Undergraduate Director of German Studies and the Director of the UC Game Lab. He is co-founder and a Senior Editor of the journal Analog Game Studies. To date, he has published 9 co-edited volumes and special journal issues, as well as over 40 articles and book chapters in various venues. His fields of expertise include East German genre cinema, German film history, critical race theory, science fiction. role-playing game studies, Nordic larp, cultural criticism, and second-language pedagogy.
José P. Zagal, PhD is a game scholar and avid game player as well. He is also a Professor with the University of Utah’s nationally ranked Division of Games where, among other things, he teaches courses on game design, ethics in videogames, and experimental games. He taught his first university-level class in 2000, has since supervised multiple award-winning student projects, and many of his former students work at leading game studios worldwide. Dr. Zagal has edited and authored numerous books and articles on game ethics, games education, game design, role-playing games, and more. He most recently co-authored Seeing Red: Nintendo’s Virtual Boy (MIT Press 2024) and co-edited Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons (MIT Press 2024) and The Routledge Handbook of Role-Playing Game Studies (Routledge 2024). He was honored as a Distinguished Scholar by the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) and named a Fellow of the Higher-Education Videogame Alliance (HEVGA) for his contributions to games research. He also serves as the Editor-In-Chief of DiGRA’s flagship journal Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association (ToDiGRA).
Additional Contributors to “Postcards from ‘Role-Playing in the Humanities'”