The DiGRA Executive Board is pleased to announce that Jailyn Zabala (student track) and Dr. Maria O’Brien (ECR track) have been selected as our Rising Stars of the year. This award recognizes the exceptionally high quality research produced by both scholars. Both have received a complimentary 1 year DiGRA membership along with the honor. Please read below to find out more about each Rising Star.
Jailyn Zabala – Student Track
Rising Star Spotlight
Jailyn is a Dominican second-generation American who understands that joy and self-exploration are a luxury that not everyone can afford. Jailyn studied at Carnegie Mellon University as an undergraduate and graduated with a degree in Psychology and Human-Computer Interaction in 2022. There they discovered a deep passion for game research and human computer interaction, working on several projects researching race and games.
Currently Jailyn is a PhD candidate at Northeastern University in the Interdisciplinary Media and Design program. In those 4 years, Jailyn has published and presented peer-reviewed work including: an awarding winning article about queer TTRPG design (FDG 2024), an article interviewing queer TTRPG players about identity exploration (DIGRA 2025) and a paper exploring culturally relevant pedagogy, ecological justice and game design (CHI 2026). Throughout this work Jailyn aims to understand how games (especially analog, community-driven games) can serve marginalized communities not just as entertainment but as tools for self-determination. In doing this work, they have interacted with many different communities, presenting and running workshops at QGCon and Ds4si.
Their ongoing dissertation research centers around the power of TTRPGs as a tool for queer people to explore their identities. Their work is grounded in qualitative methods; including interviews, content analysis and practice-based design research. As a core part of their dissertation, they aim to design a TTRPG which translates their research findings into a playable experience centered around identity exploration. This work is grounded in the voices of queer community members and queer TTRPG developers, and Jailyn hopes to continue to work with academics, game designers and queer TTRPG players to highlight how playing and making games can help us flourish and resist.
Maria O’Brien – ECR/PP Track
Rising Star Spotlight
Bio:
I completed my PhD on tax incentives for creative industries in 2020 at Dublin City University. I was appointed as lecturer in taxation at the University of Galway in March 2024 to work across both the School of Law and the School of Business. As a former lawyer, I pivoted to the academic world in 2005, doing a few masters before getting funding for a PhD. I have used my knowledge of theory and practice of law to research tax policy for digital games and am actively researching comparative tax incentive regimes across multiple jurisdictions. I have also put theory into practice through industry advocacy in Ireland, through voluntary board work with Imirt, the Irish games industry body.
Research focus:
My research reflects my background as a lawyer and tax consultant who pivoted to study of screen and creative industries. My interdisciplinary work approaches creative industries from a law and political economy perspective from a national, an EU and global perspective, recognising that the law is not neutral but has a role to play in the development of culture. I am co-founder of DiGRA Ireland, and former board member and chair of Ireland’s games industry body, Imirt (the Irish for play).
Research themes include:
• The praxis of political economy of games
• The intersection of tax and creative industries policy
• A law and political economy perspective on state policies for film and digital games • Creative policy and cultural value: the importance of tax policies for creative industries
• Comparative State aid policy in the European Union for digital games
Recent publications and achievements: My recently published book Tax Credits for Cultural Production in Europe: The Irish Example (2025) looks at tax policies for film and digital games in Ireland, taking into account the impact of EU state aid policy in this area. I also edited a special issue of the open access journal Irish Journal of Arts Management and Cultural Policy, focused on audiovisual cultural policies.
What is next
I am currently expanding my research to engage with games tax incentive regimes across the European Union and beyond. I am using my unique mix of knowledge of the disciplines and practice of law and tax and creative industries to develop cross-jurisdiction research on the development, impact and evaluation of tax credit regimes and R&D regimes in various countries in the EU, UK and others. I have actively engaged with many of the DiGRA community to help develop this work and to bring in collaborators, as this field of study is more than one person can do in one lifetime.
Tax policy is a hard sell in the field of digital games research, but I am passionate about making the tax system work for game devs, and making policy work for the games sector.
Recent Research/Publications
O’Brien, Maria. Tax Credits for Cultural Production in Europe: The Irish Example. Springer Nature Switzerland, Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan, 2025
O’Brien, M. (2025). The Impact of the European Union on Ireland’s Tax Policies for Audiovisual Industries: Between a National and Supranational Discourse. In Eds Victoria Durrer, Ali FitzGibbon and Kerry McCall Magan, Cultural Policy: Perspectives on the Island of Ireland (pp. 176-192). Routledge.
O’Brien, Maria. “The new tax credit regime for digital games production in Ireland.” Irish Journal of Arts Management and Cultural Policy 10.2 (2024): 100-113.
Hill, John, and Maria O’Brien. “Tax incentives in the audiovisual landscape: The economic and the cultural.” In Eds Ruby Cheung, John Hill, Nobuko Kawashima and Paul McDonald, Global Film Policies: New Perspectives, Routledge, 2025. 15-34.
O’Brien, Maria. “The many facets of culture in digital games policy: the EU dimension.” G| A| M| E Games as Art, Media, Entertainment 1.10 (2023).