The British DiGRA board is excited share the candidate statements for the upcoming BDiGRA Board Election. Please find them below. As a quick reminder, elections with take place at our AGM on the second day of the BDiGRA Conference next week.
The British DiGRA Conference 2025 is taking place at Birmingham City University, May 20-21. The AGM will take place at 4pm on May 21st. Online voting will be available.
Candidate statements:
Amanda Nicole Curtis
DPhil candidate in Information, Communications and the Social Sciences at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford
I look forward to positively impacting BDiGRA’s community as I wrap up my PhD at the University of Oxford. In my PhD, I investigate how playing games reconfigures the ways players think, know, and make meaning in their lives. I also bring professional experience as a user experience researcher, having worked with companies such as Sony and Adobe researching young players, online friendships, and digital authenticity. This dual perspective has shown me the importance of building strong bridges between academia and industry, ensuring research findings reach and benefit the communities we study.
My commitment to inclusive and socially-engaged research is demonstrated through my roles as the founder of the Oxford Games & Technologies group (G&T), a Women in Games Ambassador, and a Limit Break 2025 mentor. I’ve been leading G&T for three years, fostering dialogue between researchers, practitioners, and enthusiasts. Our recent Inclusive Gaming Conference brought together nearly 100 attendees, with presenters including BDiGRA members, industry professionals, graduate students, and researchers, showcasing my ability to facilitate meaningful interdisciplinary conversations about inclusion, accessibility, identity, and gaming. I’m particularly passionate about exploring alternative career paths in games research and making our work more accessible to broader audiences.
British DiGRA plays a vital role in fostering community and visibility within UK games research. I am committed to help expand that reach—especially through initiatives that build bridges between academia and industry, support ECRs, and promote safe, inclusive spaces for all. Looking ahead, I’d love to see British DiGRA host more informal gatherings, run skills-sharing programs, and explore collaborative ways to reflect on methods, ethics, and social impacts of our work — all of which I have experience carrying out. It would be an honour to serve on the board and help shape the future of British DiGRA as a dynamic, welcoming, and forward-looking community.
Joanne Mills
Independent early career researcher and artist
I would welcome the opportunity to be a member of the BDiGRA board to help shape the future of UK games research. I am particularly interested in working with BDiGRA to explore the cross-over between art and gaming, and the relevance of playable narratives in educating and exploring real-world topics; and to supporting spaces for independent early career researchers to network and develop their academic careers.
I completed my PhD in 2022, examining the development of immersive artistic practice from the 1960s, and I remain interested in audience engagement, creation and curation, and opportunities for games to educate and inform.
As an independent ECR and artist (photography, installation, interactivity within physical, digital, and digitally-augmented spaces), I feel I have a relatively unique approach to games research – and this is reflected in the publication and presenting opportunities I pursue. I have recently had a chapter published in a volume on Virtual Reality Gaming: embodiment, presence, and immersion (L. Evans, Ed., Emerald, 2025), and am developing a co-authored chapter for a forthcoming volume on monsters in video games (S. Harley, ed., publisher TBC), with a paper due to be published in a forthcoming issue of the Virtual Creativity Journal. This year I am presenting on my work at EVA London 2025, and BDiGRA. I have also recently been awarded seed funding from the BA ECR Network for a short project exploring player ownership, creativity, curation, and interactivity within Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Minecraft, Superliminal and The Unfinished Swan.
I also bring professional experience in working within HEI research culture, engagement, and impact to the role, together with forging links with other academic networks which I am a part of – including Multiplay, the network for multidisciplinary research on digital play and games, where I also sit on the editorial board.
Dr Adam Jerrett
Senior Lecturer in Game Design and Development, University of Portsmouth
As the current Industry Relations Officer for DiGRA internationally, I’m passionate about the intersections between academic research, industry practice, and how our individual and communal values affect them all. I’m standing for the British DiGRA board because I believe this chapter has enormous potential to help define and articulate how games research and development can intersect meaningfully with both broad national identity and the specific struggles within games academia and industry in the UK. We have a chance to clarify what best practices might look like for our unique island context.
The UK has a long, complex history of both game creation and study, which I am currently exploring through my own autoethnographic research. However, despite being so well-established, UK contributions can often be overshadowed by larger regions like North America or continental Europe. Whether due to geography, the political landscape, or our diverse regional identities, British contributions can sometimes feel scattered or undersung. British DiGRA can help change that by carving out a distinct role grounded in values like collaboration, criticality, and community, alongside its organizational values.
If elected, I want to help shape British DiGRA as a hub that supports early-career researchers, strengthens ties between education and industry, and brings people together around thoughtful, sometimes uncomfortable, conversations about identity, power, and culture in games. I’m especially invested in helping the chapter clarify its purpose: what we stand for, who we serve, and how we amplify underrepresented voices without losing sight of our regional chapter identity that make the UK so special. In terms of how this might occur, I envision supporting a culture of impact through collaboration with industry, academic/industry mentorship, and reflection on our unique positionalities to allow British DiGRA to be a stronger voice for games research and development internationally.
Dr Charlie Hargood
Associate Professor in Games Technology, Bournemouth University
As someone who has been a part of games and narrative systems research in the UK for over 17 years I have substantial experience in games academia. However, the reason I am putting myself forward for re-election to the BDiGRA board is because I care deeply about the communities that make up that research and connect scholars and their work. The community, connections, dialogue, and collaboration that come from organisations, such as BDiGRA, are an essential part of the research that comes from our field, and I hope to help facilitate that going forward.
BDiGRA has made good progress in the last two years reaching new communities and researchers in the UK, and participation in the upcoming conference is very encouraging. If elected, I hope to continue this trend and help to continue to make BDiGRA a broad church for the UK’s varied games research communities. This includes games studies, but also research in games art and design, storytelling, games engineers, and domains that apply games research such as education and cultural heritage. By broadening our reach we build the potential for interdisciplinary collaboration and as a community we can draw on a wider more diverse set of expertise.
I would like to use my connections in different UK games research sectors from narrative and hypertext to games education to help build that community. I would also like to use my long experience in running academic research events, which includes numerous international conferences, to help run events and build spaces for that community to connect through.
Dr Harrison Charles
Associate Lecturer, Birmingham City University
As an active member of the UK Games Studies community, who has supported and contributed to various games research events (including DiGRA 2023, BDiGRA 2024 & 2025; History of Games 2024, Video Games Cultures 2024), I would like to contribute more directly to our community by becoming a member of the board as an early career researcher.
Being a part of the British DiGRA board would allow me to work towards strengthening research and community exchange between British DiGRA members, inspired by the theme of the 2025 conference. Since the theme of the conference intended to reflect on the rich diversity of research in/on Britain in our chapter, I think British DiGRA should move towards the establishment of various working groups and networks that brings together similarly aligned research to highlight the work being done by members and hopefully curate further activities (e.g., British Queer Games Studies, British EDI working groups, research networks on Race, Policy and Politics, and a PGR Network).
British DiGRA’s involvement in facilitating these networks would support and encourage further activity building upon research that was presented at the conference, as well as expand the engagement and presence of the British DiGRA chapter itself. With my current responsibilities at Birmingham City University focusing heavily on building strong environments of research and engagement (particularly for PGRs), I am ideally placed to undertake this work as a member of the British DiGRA board, strengthening the connections between members across our chapter and enhancing our presence globally.
Mark Chapman
PhD Candidate, Birmingham City University
I am excited to apply for a position on the board of BDiGRA. As a first-year PhD candidate, I am only at the beginning of my journey in academia, so I am keen to join the community of academics, developers, and designers who make up DiGRA both in Britain and across the world. My PhD project concerns the nature of contemporary British education and its impact on videogame designers’ depictions of Britishness within their games, focussing on historical settings and personal stories which take place in ‘Britain’, and how they reflect on what ‘Britishness’ means to developers. I see BDiGRA as an excellent opportunity to bring together the criticality of academic work with the creativity of videogame designers to interrogat what it means to be an artist in contemporary Britain and how academic learning can inform how British history, society, and culture are understood by creatives and represented in contemporary gaming.
Dr Andra Ivănescu
Senior Lecturer, Brunel University of London
I am honoured to stand for re-election to the British DiGRA board and to continue contributing to the community in any way I can.
I am a Senior Lecturer at Brunel University London and Programme Lead for our Games Design BA. I’m also a ludomusicologist and co-run the Ludomusicology Research Group, including our annual Ludomusicology conference. My research explores the cultural politics of video games — initially through the lens of popular music, and more recently with a broader focus, including issues around censorship and regulation.
Over the past couple of years on the British DiGRA board, I’ve worked to support and grow our network of scholars, practitioners, and students by building bridges across different games research communities. This has included producing and co-hosting our new podcast WordPlay, as well as contributing to the development of a more welcoming, vibrant, and responsive academic space — one that reflects the diversity and richness of games scholarship in the UK today.
I believe that all of this — our community, our shared knowledge, and the connections we build — is especially vital given the current political climate and the ongoing crisis in the university sector, both nationally and internationally. At a time when academic freedom, critical research, and public education are under increasing pressure, spaces like British DiGRA offer crucial support, solidarity, and a platform for engaged, socially conscious scholarship.
British DiGRA is a community I care deeply about: a space for collaboration, critical engagement, and mutual support across disciplines and career stages. I’m standing again for the board, and also putting myself forward for the role of Chair, because I want to help continue building on that foundation — fostering an active, inclusive network that supports meaningful research, dialogue, and connection.
I really appreciate your consideration.
Robin Longobardi Zingarelli
Doctoral Researcher in Games Design, Brunel University of London
As a PhD student researching transgender subjectivities in Games within the UK context, I am deeply engaged with issues of representation, ethics, and community in game studies. I’m active in networks and conferences such as GamesLit and DiGRA, and I have long advocated for gender diverse subjectivities both in primary and higher Education, in Italy, my home country, and in the UK. Most importantly, I’m passionate about the field of game studies—drawn to its innovation, its transdisciplinarity, and the vibrant network of scholars and creators who shape it.
I’m running for the British DiGRA Board because I’m committed to supporting such a diverse, dynamic, and responsive research environment.
My experience supporting game design teams also fuels my interest in building stronger connections between academia and industry.
If elected, I would work to broaden British DiGRA’s reach—supporting more opportunities specifically for PGRs, as recurring meetings and/or writing groups, and workshops tailored to early career researcher, to strengthen ties with the game studies community both within and outside the UK.
I would also advocate for a comprehensive diversity policy that reflects the complexity of the UK context, with the aim of supporting any marginalised researcher, and particularly every transgender researcher within the UK context at this challenging time.
Dr Hadi Mehrpouya
Lecturer in Computer Games Technology at Abertay University
I am an artist and lecturer in Computer Games Technology at Abertay University. My current research area focuses on the intersection of video games and ecology.
I am always inspired by the many colleagues I met at DiGRA, among them an exciting and cutting-edge community of post-graduate students. I worked well with the current committee and hope to work with the future committee of British DiGRA to develop more content and rhythm for our local chapter. I aim to further develop the wordplay podcast that Andra and I created, continue expanding the DiGRA network alongside other members, and maintain our chapter of DiGRA into a network accessible to all members, promoting, engaging, and supporting one another. I would also love to develop some content around failure as we “fail” to secure funding in an increasingly competitive and budget-constrained environment, how do we avoid failing to think? Additionally, I would like to explore other ways to learn from our members, such as playing/streaming together and reflecting on different aspects of our medium. This could involve taking our members on a walk, e.g., in Death Stranding, and discussing their work and research with them.