Sonia Fizek is an associate professor in Media and Game Studies at the Cologne Game Lab at Technical University of Cologne (TH Köln) and a co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds. Her upcoming monograph Playing at a Distance. Borderlands of Video Game Aesthetic (contracted with MIT Press, 2022) explores digital play through a post-humanist lens, analysing play formats and practices that require little or no human action. Her most recent field of academic interest focuses on sustainability of digital media and video games. She is also a co-founder of “GREETA: Green Production Assistant” (greeta.eu), a solution for green shooting and production in film in its early research stage.
Tuki Clavero is a Senior Researcher in Creative & Entertainment Video Games at the Breda University of Applied Sciences, and game developer. She has lectured about games as research tools. Trained in Game Design from ITU Copenhagen, and Game Architecture and Design at Breda University. She was co-lead designer of the IGF finalist ATUM and has worked on a variety of games, ranging from educational games to gameful designs for better living. She is working on the design and identification of design-patterns for psychological horror games in VR
Laura Frings is the research manager at Cologne Game Lab and also manages the Master’s program 3D Animation for Film & Games, a joint program by CGL and ifs köln. She received her Master’s degree in Comparative Literature as well as her PhD in English Studies from the University of Bonn.
Her teaching in the field of Media Studies focuses on Green Media, Animation Studies, and Academic Writing. In addition to these topics, Laura’s research interests extend to Postcolonial Studies, particularly the representation of national discourses and their counter-narratives in literature, film, and games.
Maria B. Garda is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre of Excellence in Game Culture Studies, University of Turku, Finland. She is an expert of media history, and her current work focuses on preservation of games as cultural heritage. Maria’s recent publications have dealt with local game histories, and she was previously involved with several research projects, including: “Alternative Usage of New Media Technology During The Decline of People’s Republic of Poland” (University of Lodz, 2013-17) and “Creative Micro-computing in Australia, 1976-1992” (Flinders University, 2017-18). Since 2021, she is part of the Nordic Alliance for Sustainability in Gaming network.
Mata Haggis-Burridge is Professor of Creative and Entertainment Games at Breda University of Applied Sciences (BUas), where they have worked since 2010. They completed their PhD in literature in 2006. Their work focuses on video game content, creation, and culture within the arts and commercial entertainment context. Topics range between social impact (such as diversity representation), storytelling methods and creative expression, to detailed practical studies of design, technology, and content implementation. Mata is also a writer for commercial video games, a member of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain’s video game committee, on the steering committee for the Dutch ‘Kunst ≈ Onderzoek’ platform, treasurer for Breda Game City, and an external expert of Creative Media Europe, among other roles.
Andrea has a master’s degree in New Media Studies with focus on Game Studies at Charles University. They also spent 5 months studying the Game Studies programme at Tampere University of Finland as part of an exchange studies programme. Andrea works at two Czech indie game studios. They are a QA Lead & Game Designer at Charles Games, and a QA & Support person at Amanita Design. Her research interests include climate messaging in video games as well as considerations of player responses to them. Andrea has been an active member of the game dev community for 5 years, attending game jams and making small games in their free time.
Lukáš has been developing computer and board games for over 10 years. In his academic career, Lukáš is working as a researcher at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of Charles University. He is focused on game user experience and study of effects of video games on their players. His latest research project investigates how video games affect players’ attitudes towards the topics depicted in those games. Lukáš is also the CEO of the video game studio Charles Games (charlesgames.net) responsible for various game projects, such as Attentat 1942 or Svoboda 1945: Liberation. He dedicates his time to local game-related community events and co-organizes the largest game jams in the Czech republic.
Karoliina Koskinen is a Project Researcher at the Centre of Excellence in Game Culture studies at the University of Turku. Prior to this, she did a five-month internship period at the Centre as part of her master’s programme in Utrecht University. In addition to the Greening Games project, which focuses on the themes of sustainability in digital gaming, her current projects center around preservation of the early non-digital game history in Finland, historic and contemporary cultures of creative computing, and a study that utilises Postcolonial theory to analyse a Finnish board game from the 1930s. Her research interests include Postcolonial theory, sustainable development, collective memory and memory studies. Karoliina is a University of Aberdeen graduate of 2020 and in 2021, she graduated from her Masters in International Relations in Historical Perspective from Utrecht University.