These are the bios for the proposed new Chinese DiGRA board, to serve from 2020 to 2022. We do not have multiple nominations for any position, so we will finalise the board on the 1st of October unless there are any objections from CDiGRA members between now and then. Thanks to everyone who took part in the nominations and to those who have put their name forward to serve this time.
President: Paul Martin
Paul Martin is an Associate Professor in Digital Media and Communications at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. His research is mainly in the field of game studies, with three areas of particular focus. His work on meaning in digital games takes an approach based on hermeneutic phenomenology in order to understand how game interpretation takes place. His work on Chinese games and gaming focuses on the relationship between Chinese games and historical understanding and on e-sports in Chinese universities. He also publishes work on game studies as a field. Outside of game studies he has published work on Japanese manga as well as the uses of technology in the classroom. He is a founder member of the Chinese chapter of the Digital Games Research Association and currently serves as its president.
Vice President: Peter AC Nelson
Dr Peter AC Nelson is an art historian, game scholar and visual artist working at the intersection of computer game and landscape studies. He is engaged in a prolonged consideration of the history of landscape images, how they are remediated by technological shifts, and how these shifts absorb and reflect changes in our relationships with the physical environment. He has exhibited his artworks widely, including projects with HanArt TZ Gallery (Hong Kong), The National Palace Museum (Taiwan), The Sichuan Fine Art Academy Museum (Chongqing), the K11 Art Foundation (Hong Kong) and HowArt Museum (Shanghai) and is a regular contributor to the Philosophy of Computer Games Conference, DiGRA and Chinese DiGRA, of which he is a current board member. Peter is an Assistant Professor at the Academy of Visual Arts and the Augmented Creativity Lab at Hong Kong Baptist University where he is working on research projects that span player-generated content, landscape encoding using Generative Adversarial Networks and the ontology of the digital image.
Secretary: Jonathan Frome
Jonathan Frome is an independent scholar based in Hong Kong whose research focuses on emotional responses to interactive media. He received a PhD in Film Studies from University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has published in journals such as Games and Culture, Journal of Asthetics and Art Criticism, Projections, and Quarterly Review of Film and Video. His research interests include video game studies, film theory, aesthetics, and emotion.
Communications/Public relations: Hugh Davies 戴修
Dr Hugh Davies is a maker, curator and researcher. His practice explores histories of mobile devices and cultures of games and play in the Asia Pacific Region. Awarded a PhD in Art, Design and Architecture from Monash University in 2014, Davies’s research has been supported with fellowships from Tokyo Art and Space, M+ Museum of Visual Culture and the Hong Kong Design Trust. Davies is a postdoctoral research fellow at RMIT in Melbourne, Australia. 戴修是藝術家、研究員，主要探索有趣的遊戲設備，並視城市為遊戲版圖。他透過以實踐為本的研究，探究玩樂如何成為分隔遊戲與日常、現實與虛擬的流動界線。他在2014年於蒙納殊大學取得藝術、設計及建築哲學博士學位，研究題材為跨媒體遊戲。近年，他成為Tokyo Arts and Space的資助研究員及香港M+ / Design Trust 研究學人，研究亞太區遊戲文化，目前擔任皇家墨爾本理工大學的博士後研究員。
Student representative: Benjamin Horn
Benjamin Horn is a PhD student at the City University of Hong Kong. Previously a teacher and Foreign Director at the College of Culture and Education at Guangxi Normal University, where he taught classes in English literature and cross-cultural communications, he became interested in the novel forms that narratives are taking in video games, and so left his position to pursue a doctorate. He is primarily concerned with research issues centered around game criticism, and is working on a new model for the study and analysis of narrative games, with an emphasis on the use of quests as a methodological tool, and combining theory with practice in the form of accompanying case studies. He is also deeply invested in Chinese culture and history, and can speak fluent Mandarin. When he is not writing, he is playing games, reading, or cooking.
Student representative: Yu Hao
HAO Yu is a PhD Candidate at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. She is researching the intersections of computer games, new media art, and media philosophy. Her current projects are focused around the process-relational aspect of computer games as digital objects and the social, political, and performative dimensions of computer gameplay. She holds an MA in Creative Media from City University of Hong Kong and a BA in Communication from East China Normal University in Shanghai. Her recent publications include “Video Games about Politics as States of Exception” in Gamevironments (2020, in press) and “Computer Games as Social Sculptures: Toward a Reevaluation of the Social Potential of Games and Play” in the Proceedings of the 2020 DiGRA International Conference. She has also presented at conferences internationally including Chinese DiGRA Conference (Beijing, 2019), Games and Literature Theory Conference (Kolkata, 2019), and Process, Performance and Mediation – Intermedia Studies Symposium (Lund, 2020).
Industry liaison: Yigang Liu
Yigang Liu (Neal), the Ph.D. candidate from SAFA, Shanghai University. From 2018 to the present, I served as the director of game design in Shanghai company of Beijing MeiXingSiYuan International Education Technology co., LTD. From 2018 to present, I have been a member of the academic advisory group of Shanghai Qihuang technology co., LTD. (Qihuang E-sports, the strategic partner of Tencent E-sports). Since 2014, I have been working as a news illustrator for Yixing Daily. From 2013 to 2018, I worked in the Wuxi Institute of Arts and Technology, Jiangsu Province, where I was responsible for digital game design lecturing and served as the director of the 3D printing laboratory. In 2013, I worked as the architectural design director of Cambodia Chen Group. From 2011 to 2012, I studied at Abertay Dundee University in the UK and obtained a master’s degree in game design and development. I studied in Shanghai university from 2007 to 2011 and received a bachelor’s degree in engineering.
Open seat 1: Chen Jiaqing
I am a lecturer of Communication at the University of Zhejiang (the School of Journalism and Communication). My current research preference is game spectatorship and I have been studying grassroot game-streaming behavior and game-spectating behavior. Meanwhile, I am planning on pushing forward the research to observe diverse patterns of game-playing-online-streaming behavior, including different game types and different streamers. I am also interested in the career path of e-sports player in China, especially in the aspects of vocational education and professional career development. I am more than glad to have the opportunity to work as a board member in CDiGRA.
Open seat 2: Tara Fickle
Tara Fickle is Associate Professor of English at the University of Oregon, and Affiliated Faculty of the Department of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies, the New Media & Culture Certificate, the Center for the Study of Women in Society, the Center for Asian & Pacific Studies, and the Comics and Cartoon Studies and Digital Humanities minors. Fickle received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, and her B.A. from Wesleyan University. She works at the intersections of critical race studies and game studies. Fickle’s work has appeared in journals such asModern Fiction Studies and MELUS, as well as various public humanities portals. Her first book, “The Race Card: From Gaming Technologies to Model Minorities,” (NYU Press, 2019), explores how games have been used to establish and combat Asian and Asian American racial stereotypes. Fickle is currently working on a digital archive and analysis of the canonical Asian American anthology, Aiiieeeee!, with additional research projects on Chinese gold farming and the racialized dimensions of esports. She also runs You on the Market (https://youonthemarket.wordpress.com/), a comprehensive website for academic job-seekers. More information can be found at tarafickle.comand Aiiieeeee.org.
Open seat 3: Olli Tapio Leino
Olli Tapio Leino is a computer game studies and philosophy of computer games scholar focusing on materiality, experience, emotion, and interpretation in computer games and playable art. He is an associate professor at School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. Leino’s research has been published in Game Studies, Games & Culture, and Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds, with translations appearing in Teksty Drugie (Poland) and Intexto (Brazil). Leino is a recipient of multiple Hong Kong General Research Fund (GRF) grants, and has carried out contracted research for Hong Kong Government. He has been interviewed on the topic of computer games research for Radio and Television Hong Kong, South China Morning Post, Television Broadcasts Ltd. (TVB), and BBC Radio 5.