Soon Election Buddy will open for the 2027-9 DiGRA Executive Board. Keep your eyes on your inbox for a ballot and if you do not see an invitation to vote by 17:00 ET, please check your spam folder. The subject line will read: “Vote now: DiGRA – DiGRA Board 2027-9.” Current members will receive a unique URL to vote. Please do not share this URL as it is single use.
Please note that only registered DiGRA members are eligible to vote in DiGRA elections. To check your membership status, please log into Memberful using the email address you signed up with or used when you registered at the last DiGRA conference. If you are not a member and have evidence that you paid, please email digrainternational@gmail.com.
Candidate names and full platforms are provided below (and will also be provided on Election Buddy). Roles appear in the order they are on the self nomination form and on the ballot. If only one name appears, that candidate is running unopposed.
Role descriptions have been summarized for ease of reading. To view the full list of responsibilities associated with each role, click here.
Candidates & Platforms
President
The President is responsible for ensuring the continuity and development of DiGRA and ensuring that the association undertakes, to the best of its combined abilities, actions to facilitate this.
Carlos Gabriel Kelly González
Hello everyone! My name is Carlos Kelly and I have been part of DiGRA for 4 years. As a scholar, I am one of the leading voices in Latinx/e Game Studies with a monograph on the subject (Ready Player Juan) as well as a co-edited collection coming out in Fall 2027 with University of Arizona Press, Latinx Gaming. Additionally, as a graduate student, I was the director of operations leading Ohio State’s premiere Latinx peer-to-peer mentorship organization, LASER (Latinx Space for Enrichment and Research, 2017-2020), where I hired undergraduate and graduate students to mentor peers and high school students at 10 local high schools in Columbus, Ohio, USA. As director, I organized three yearly signature events centered on helping students apply, acclimate, and excel in higher education.
As an assistant professor, I continue to value mentorship and spaces for early career scholars and students to gain professionalization and publication opportunities. At DiGRA, I would like to focus on three things: mentorship, diversity, and access. As President, I would work with the board to establish and promote new mentorship opportunities for mentors and mentees, such as forming dedicated writing groups and conference mixers for new members/scholars to connect with established voices. I want to broaden diversity, especially when considering participation from marginalized groups and the mechanisms we can use to provide funding and professionalization opportunities to scholars in precarious positions. I want to also examine potential best practices for making presentations, and any written communication more accessible across languages. Thank you!
Tomasz Z. Majkowski
I work as a professor at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, where I am the head of the local Game Research Centre. I am mostly interested in the carnivalesque, grotesque, transgressive, and funny in games, but in recent years I have also focused on the role games play in national cultures and identities.
I have chaired organization and program committees for numerous international conferences; I have been DiGRA program chair twice and led the local organization committee for DiGRA 2022 after its emergency relocation to Kraków. I am a founding member of the Games Research Association of Poland, the Central and Eastern European Game Studies Association (later turned into the DiGRA CEE chapter), and the Games and Literary Theory conference series. I was DiGRA vice-president for the 2022–2024 term.
In 2019, together with Souvik Mukherjee, we suggested creating the DiGRA Solidarity Fund. As DiGRA President, I would like to continue taking DiGRA in this direction, stressing solidarity, collaboration, and goodwill within the international game studies community. Together with a group of colleagues from numerous countries, we believe DiGRA’s biggest challenge and opportunity is transitioning from its current centralized structure into a network facilitating collaboration between local DiGRA Chapters, and giving Chapters a direct voice in DiGRA governance. We hope for DiGRA to become more involved in supporting scholars from underprivileged regions and strengthening game studies infrastructures there, while maintaining integrity by the introduction of an independent, elected body for handling complaints and resolving tensions within associations.
Vice President
The Vice-President assists the President in all tasks required. In the absence of the President, the Vice-President shall take on the President’s duties as appropriate.
Souvik Mukherjee
I am a researcher from South Asia, with over twenty five years of experience in Game Studies and Digital Humanities and have made pioneering contributions to both areas by setting up DiGRA’s India chapter and DHARTI, India’s digital humanities research community. In my work, I explore the synergies between Games Studies and other areas in the Humanities and Social Sciences where game research is often crucial but not as well known. I have a particular focus on postcolonial and decolonial perspectives in games studies and addressing algorithmic bias and South-South concerns. I have been an open-seat member of the DiGRA board under three presidents and for multiple terms. I have also been actively involved in early diversity initiatives of DiGRA and also in setting up the DiGRA Solidarity fund. If elected, one of my major aims will be to expand DiGRA’s ongoing initiatives to support videogames research in Global South countries and to research communities that would benefit for DiGRA’s support. I also aim to pursue building closer ties with DH and boardgames research groups the world over and also industry partners interested in games research. Being deeply invested in the history of games research, I wish to think of working on projects to build a robust archive of the work that has been done so far, particularly those that are ephemeral and at risk. Finally, as vice-president, I will give my fullest to support the DiGRA board and its president in continuing DiGRA’s inclusive and diverse development agenda.
Secretary
The Secretary is responsible for maintaining copies of all records of the Association and producing and filing minutes of all executive committee meetings.
Amanda Jankowitz
I am a Lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) and President of DiGRA South Africa, with research interests in game studies, game-based learning, gamification, digital equity, and educational innovation. Through my academic leadership, conference organisation, committee service, and international collaborations, I have gained extensive experience in governance, administration, communication, and community building.
If elected as Secretary, my priority would be to support a transparent, organised, and member-focused DiGRA. Effective record-keeping and communication are essential to a thriving scholarly association. I would work to ensure that meeting minutes, board records, executive reports, and membership communications are accurate, accessible, and delivered in a timely manner. Strong institutional memory helps maintain continuity, supports informed decision-making, and enables members to engage meaningfully with the work of the Association.
I am particularly interested in strengthening communication between the Executive Board, chapters, and members, while ensuring that emerging voices and growing regional communities remain connected to DiGRA’s global activities. Through my experience establishing and leading DiGRA South Africa, I have seen how clear processes, responsive administration, and regular communication can foster participation and create opportunities for collaboration.
My professional experience includes chairing working groups, serving on university committees, coordinating multidisciplinary teams, preparing minutes and reports, and managing complex projects involving diverse stakeholders. I would be honoured to contribute these skills as Secretary and help ensure that DiGRA remains a well-organised, inclusive, and globally connected organisation that effectively serves its members.
Dara Coema
I am a PhD student and scholarship recipient at Fluminense Federal University (UFF), Brazil, researching games, marginalized communities, and public policies aimed at youth from the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. Over the past decade, I have consistently volunteered for leadership, organizational, and administrative roles, including interning in university administrative sectors and co-managing GameClube UFF, an extension project for game studies and science communication, since 2016.
Beyond presenting papers, I co-organized the 2022 DiGRA Brazilian Chapter Conference, serving as the chapter’s student representative, and helped organize the musiludens International Conference on Music, Media, and Play in 2023. Since 2024, I have coordinated a games and esports social project in the Rocinha favela, navigating complex administrative bureaucracies and deepening my understanding of games in underrepresented regions.
As a candidate for the Secretary role on DiGRA’s Executive Board, I believe we must work together to build a more connected and representative international community within DiGRA through greater transparency, and stronger collaboration. As Secretary, I will translate these principles into concrete administrative actions, focusing on institutional openness and ensuring that Executive Committee updates and summaries are clear, accessible, and regularly shared to foster a culture of accountability.
Furthermore, I am committed to providing the administrative framework needed to empower our chapters and reach underrepresented regions, particularly in the Global South, helping to establish supportive data structures that facilitate resource exchange and communication across networks.
Renata Ntelia
My name is Renata Ntelia. I am a Senior Lecturer in Games at the University of Lincoln, UK. I am running for Secretary of DiGRA. Since joining DiGRA in 2020, I have found in it an intellectual home and a community that, in 2023, honoured me with a keynote in Seville. Serving as Secretary would be my way of giving back: caring for our legacy and making sure it belongs to all of us.
I am a games scholar with an international profile and an established research network. I have managed funded projects, including Horizon Europe, where records, reports, and deadlines across international partners are part of the daily tasks. As Communications Officer for the COST Action Grassroots of Digital Europe, I kept a large multinational network informed and connected. Indeed, experience has taught me that clear reporting is not mere paperwork; it is what makes an association accountable to its members.
My vision is a more open and inclusive DiGRA. Minutes and records should be accessible to every member. More importantly, I would use this role to support decentralisation, improving how information and resources flow between the executive and the regional chapters, so that the chapters gain real visibility, voice, and power. DiGRA’s strength has always been its plurality, and I am a strong believer that our structures should reflect it.
Thomas Apperley
Platform: Owning mistakes, conference security, and diversity.
Leadership means owning your mistakes. Good leadership isn’t about never getting anything wrong, it’s about being honest when you do. An organisation that can’t acknowledge its own missteps will lose the community’s trust.
Conference security needs to be taken seriously. I stand for clear, consistently enforced policies and reporting channels. DiGRA is stronger when newer and underrepresented researchers get support and recognition. Newer researchers shouldn’t have to figure this field out entirely on their own, DiGRA should to continue to welcome and support the development postgraduate, PhD and ECR researchers.
Chapter Officer
The Chapter Officer serves as a liaison between DiGRA Executive Board and DiGRA Chapters, monitoring and reporting their activities, voicing concerns and questions of chapter members, and facilitating inter-chapter collaboration.
Emmanoel Ferreira
I am a professor of Media Studies at Fluminense Federal University (UFF), Brazil, where I teach and supervise research in game studies. I have been engaged with the international DiGRA community since 2009 and, over the past two decades, have contributed to consolidate and advance game studies in Brazil. I coordinated the Games Symposium in Brazil’s largest Communication conference (INTERCOM) from 2020 to 2022, currently serve on the steering committee of History of Games, and have been track chair for the Game History and Cultural Context track at the DiGRA international conference (2024-2026).
Within DiGRA Brazil, I served as vice-president and currently serve as president, having organized two national conferences (2024 and November 2026) – both awarded competitive financial support by the main Brazilian federal funding agency (CAPES) – and worked to expand participation across regions, institutions, and career stages.
As chapter officer, I would serve as an active liaison between DiGRA’s Executive Board and its chapters, organizing chapter meetings, supporting funding requests – having navigated this process directly – and overseeing new chapter creation. My priorities include strengthening chapters’ voice in DiGRA’s governance, facilitating exchanges of knowledge and resources, and supporting game studies communities in underrepresented regions.
As a scholar based in Brazil and Latin America, I am committed to ensuring that regional perspectives are better represented within DiGRA. I see this candidacy as part of a collective effort to reinforce the role of chapters in shaping the association’s future and to build a more connected, representative international community.
Dr. Stephanie Farnsworth
I am seeking nomination for the role of Chapter Officer, taking over from the outstanding Dr Iris Kleinecke-Bates who has conducted this role so effectively. I have extensive experience working across editorial boards, and with different stakeholders, such as publishers. I wish to bring this experience to the role of Chapter Officer to ensure the continued smooth communications from chapter members to DiGRA.
At a time of great precarity within higher education, it is imperative to safeguard the work of those within game studies. To do this, it is important to continue with the creation of chapters, which will grow the voice and reach of DiGra. For growth, it is essential to continue and expand communications, calls for chapter member involvement, and produce clear and regular reports of activities. Through reporting of activities and good data compilation, DiGra may identify quickly how the landscape of academia continues to transform and therefore be proactive in responding to concerns of chapter members.
The Chapter Officer should also ensure a close relationship with other elected posts across DiGRA. The tumultuous period in higher education has had a disproportionate impact on equality and diversity, for instance. It is therefore critical that members’ voices are integrated into the direction of DiGRA chapters, and that there is cohesive and supportive inter-chapter collaboration.
Thank you for your time and consideration. It would be an immense privilege to be able to fulfil this role at such a crucial time for games studies.
Diversity Officer
The Diversity Officer is the core responsible person to work with the conference Local Organising Committee to ensure diversity guidelines are implemented during the conference.
Yekta Kalantar Hormozi
The past term, I served as DiGRA’s Diversity Officer, and I’m running for re-election to build on that work and expand it further.
During my term, I organised the recreation of the DiGRA Ombuds Team and rebuilt the Diversity Subcommittee. With that subcommittee, we wrote DiGRA’s first-ever White Paper, “Behaviour Guidelines for DiGRA Events,” setting out clear behavioural expectations for our community. We also ran a workshop that gave community members space to share not only their research but also the hardships they face as researchers from different backgrounds, highlighting experiences that rarely get a formal outlet.
My commitment to diversity is also grounded in my own experiences. As an Iranian immigrant woman and neurodivergent scholar, I have consistently sought to amplify voices that are too often unheard in academic spaces. My research also sits at the intersection of video games and culture, including through my work on gamer communities in sanctioned and black-listed countries. As the first Iranian and Middle Eastern member of the DiGRA Board, my presence has helped broaden the range of experiences and perspectives represented in the room, especially in the current global climate.
For the next term, my goal is to build on what the subcommittee and I established this past term, expand it and continue to act as a vessel for community members whose experiences don’t always find their way into formal channels.
Robin Longobardi Zingarelli
As a PhD researcher investigating transgender subjectivities in video games, I am deeply engaged with questions of diversity, representations, and community in game studies both from a practical and research oriented perspective.
I joined DiGRA in 2022, and it was the first conference where I felt comfortable enough to be openly out as transgender, which in turn prompted me to contribute to the association and to its commitment to diversity. Since joining, I have taken on several roles focused on diversity and community care (member of DiGRA Diversity Group in 2023, volunteer for DiGRA Malta 2025, Ombuds in 2025, EDI Officer for British DiGRA in 2025, DiGRA Italia board member in 2026). Throughout these years, I worked with fellow peers on a guidance for the inclusion of transgender scholars at conferences, and have co-organised a DiGRA workshop (2025) focused on queer presence in game studies and on the experiences that queer researchers from different geographical and cultural backgrounds face in academic contexts, conferences included.
These experiences have given me a close understanding of the organisation and strengthened my commitment in ensuring that our community is accessible and safe to all, particularly to those who face more struggles because of their positionality.
As Diversity Officer, I plan on centering underrepresented voices, supporting particularly PGRs from marginalised backgrounds, strengthening accessible routes into DiGRA, and fostering connections across different geographical and cultural contexts – both through recurrent meetings, financial support, and guidances that address participants’ lived experience and challenges. My priority is ensuring that DiGRA keeps being a space where scholars who are already facing difficult circumstances can find support, empathy, and the means to express their ideas without being subjected to any form of marginalisation.
Sustainability Officer
The Sustainability Officer advises the Association in all matters of sustainable and environmentally responsible research and conference organization.
Beatriz Blanco
I am a Program Coordinator and Professor of Game Development and Multimedia Production at Senac University Center in São Paulo, Brazil, where I teach Game and UX Design. Beyond academia, I have worked as a gaming journalist covering indie activism, which led me to participate in feminist grassroots organizations for game workers. These experiences shaped my understanding of how sustainable academic and professional communities depend on equity and long-term support structures. Academically, my research focuses on digital activism in gaming communities, and I have been an active member of DiGRA’s Brazilian and international networks since 2020.
In my current role, I prioritize interdisciplinary Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives for students and faculty. Recently, I have led teams to achieve significant milestones: creating our program’s first “Games and Social Impact” course, implementing a comprehensive Code of Conduct, and increasing the representation of socially vulnerable groups in our degrees. These initiatives reflect my commitment to creating long-term institutional structures that support social responsibility, inclusion, and sustainable community building.
I believe that sustainability goes beyond environmental challenges, comprehending how we build resilient, inclusive, and supportive academic communities. It also involves ensuring that scholars and chapters have the conditions to participate and thrive over the long term. Being based in Brazil, I am particularly aware of the challenges faced by scholars and institutions working with limited resources, and I believe these perspectives are essential to discussions about sustainability.
David Harold ten Cate
I am David Harold ten Cate, a PhD Candidate at Queensland University of Technology, and I previously served on the board of the Games and Literary Theory conference (2024-2026). My main research area is ecocriticism, which revolves around the critical study of the ecological implications of media, and in which games play an increasingly substantial role. From an ecocritical perspective, sustainability means more than reducing the accumulation of waste and environmental footprint. It also invites us to reflect on what we want to sustain: a thriving, accessible academic culture with a gratifying, healthy and safe research practice. I see the advisory task of Sustainability Officer as a matter of navigating the possible tensions between the sustainability of our diverse culture and the challenge to conduct our practice in an environmentally responsible manner. Specifically, I would like to make a priority of advising on the following issues: 1) a clear and interculturally fair implementation of policies on GenAI (following insights by the subcommittee), both as a research area and through regulatory advice on its place in DiGRA-related academic practice and outputs such as papers and presentations; 2) the improvement of the hybrid/online conference attendance experience and the support of online academic initiatives outside of the annual conference; and 3) the experimentation with conference-specific sustainability measures that dynamically adapt to community engagement and feedback.
Student Officer
The Student Officer is the voice of the students (PhD students included) on the Executive Board. The core responsibilities are monitoring student-facing DiGRA events, controlling whether official actions of the association remain student-friendly and reporting to the board any student-related issues and concerns in a timely manner.
Adrija Mukherjee
Hi everyone! My name is Adrija Mukherjee, and I am a doctoral student at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC), India. My research lies at the intersection of Game Studies and Archaeology, exploring material histories of boardgames and memories of play cultures. I have worked on several digital archiving projects, including one focused on boardgames, and currently coordinate a game development project supporting emerging women game developers and students across analogue and digital games. As a doctoral student, I have also begun presenting my research internationally and contributing to academic publications.
From my experience, I see DiGRA as a wider Game Studies community for peer exchange, creating opportunities to connect across disciplines, encounter new approaches, and open up new ideas for early career researchers. As a student from the Global South, such opportunities are rare, and I was honoured to receive the DiGRA Solidarity Fund for DiGRA 2026 in Maynooth and experience this community first-hand at the annual conference.
As a student, and for students, I would like to help build on this inclusive space. I hope to make student representation more active throughout the year by listening to students, bringing their concerns to the Board, and helping make opportunities accessible across different regions and academic contexts. I would also like to contribute to a PhD Consortium fostering peer exchange, mentoring, and conversations beyond formal presentations, connecting students with experts throughout the year through different initiatives.
If considered, I hope to bring my experience, energy, and commitment to the Student Officer role, while continuing to learn from the DiGRA community. Thank you all!
Huajing Pan
Huajing is a PhD student in Computer Science at Trinity College Dublin. Her doctoral project, funded by the Trinity Research Doctorate Award, explores multimodal Digital Twins and XR authoring tools for immersive storytelling in heritage contexts. Her interdisciplinary background combines creative technologies, game studies, and philosophy. She has presented research on game design and interactive digital narrative at international conferences including DiGRA and FDG, and one of her papers received the Early Career Best Paper Award at FDG 2025.
As an early-career researcher and international student who has studied across Hong Kong, Sweden, and Ireland, Huajing understands firsthand the barriers students might encounter when participating in DiGRA conferences, such as visa applications and travel funding. If elected as the Student Officer, Huajing will devote herself to making information regarding conference submissions and participation more accessible, strengthening connections between students and the wider DiGRA community, and representing students’ needs and concerns across diverse disciplinary, cultural, and geographical backgrounds.
Ottar Paulus
Motivation
I nominate myself for the Student Officer position because I am a PhD student who wants more experience organizing conferences and to make the conferences as accessible as possible. I know doing conferences as a beginner can be frightening and confusing, and I want to help make the process welcoming to newcomers while also having the chance to get to know more about my peers.
Previous Experience
I have previously helped organize and moderate a small hybrid conference, Play and Preserve. I was also the lead organizer for the Academic Track section of the Gotland Game Conference 2026, where I created a space for Uppsala University students to showcase their academic work in game studies in a familiar environment and take their first steps toward presenting at conferences. I have also been a student helper for The 4th ICH Forum: Digital Dissemination and Innovative Development of Intangible Cultural Heritage and will be a student helper for the International Conference on AI, Technology, and Emerging Media.
Play and Preserve (hybrid conference) (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61571104037197)
Gotland Game Conference 2026: Academic Track
(https://gotlandgameconference.com/2026/academic-track/)
The 4th ICH Forum: Digital Dissemination and Innovative Development of Intangible Cultural Heritage
https://comm.hkbu.edu.hk/en/news-and-events/events/20260918.html
International Conference on AI, Technology, and Emerging Media (16 -18 Oct 2026)
https://comm.hkbu.edu.hk/en/news-and-events/events/20261016.html
Industry Relations Officer
The Industry Relations Officer serves as a liaison between DiGRA members and industry partners, fostering non-zero-sum collaborations. Industry partners are video game companies, game platforms like Steam, video game development incubators, esports professionals etc.
Nkiruka Sophia Anizoba
I am a Senior Technical Product Manager at Activision, where I have spent the past four years working across game technology, AI-enabled tools, and developer workflows. My work has included leading the product direction for generative AI tools used in game-development pipelines and translating emerging technical capabilities into systems that are useful to artists, developers, and production teams. I hold an MS from MIT Sloan and am also developing an early-stage product at the intersection of AI, games, and learning.
I am running for Industry Relations Officer because I see a significant opportunity to strengthen the exchange between games research and the people building and deploying technology in industry. If elected, I would focus on creating practical bridges between DiGRA researchers and industry practitioners through structured industry-research roundtables, mentorship and knowledge-sharing opportunities, clearer pathways for companies to surface research questions, and collaborations around emerging areas such as AI, player experience, developer tools, and responsible technology.
My product background has required me to work across technical, creative, and organizational boundaries, and I would bring that same approach to DiGRA. My goal would be to help create collaborations that are useful to researchers and practitioners alike while preserving the independence and rigor that make DiGRA’s research community valuable.
Elina Roinioti
I am an Assistant Professor at the University of the Peloponnese. Since 2024, I have been serving as DiGRA Vice-President, a role that has given me the opportunity to work closely with the community and better understand its changing needs and priorities. During my term, I proposed the creation of a new Board position focused on strengthening the relationship between games research and the games industry: the Industry Relations Officer.
My professional background brings together academia, industry, policy, and community-building. Having worked in the games industry and closely with game communities-as communications manager for a games cluster, games advisor to the Greek government, and through my work with Kickstarter, among other roles-I have seen the importance of dialogue between different stakeholders in the field.
I see the Industry Relations Officer role as an opportunity to create more spaces for exchange between researchers and practitioners, as well as to explore ways of improving researchers’ access to industry knowledge and data.
Working with the DiGRA Chapter Officer, I am particularly interested in bringing greater attention to production and design voices beyond the major industry centres, connecting research on game production with work on local and national game cultures.
For the past three years I have also been coordinating a Greek network for women working in games. Together with DiGRA’s Diversity Officer, I see value in developing initiatives that make industry-research exchanges more inclusive and responsive to different identities.
Adam Jerrett
I’m reapplying for the Industry Liaison seat because I still think DiGRA has a lot of room to make games research more visible and useful to the industry outside of academia. My background is in game development teaching and research, so I feel part of the industry I am bringing students into. I hope that mix has been useful to the Board, as increasingly game design and development expertise is required of game academics, which is why I believe a role that champions it is so important.
In terms of platform, I really care about scientific communication. I spend a lot of time in industry spaces, and I want DiGRA to do more to help developers and other practitioners see why games research matters to them, without reducing research to the “practical takeaways” they so often request. I’d like to keep developing initiatives such as Research Snapshots, a potentially upcoming initiative to highlight amazing DiGRA research. I also hope to keep connecting with studios to foster collaboration and partnerships at future Digra events.
I also want to continue the work I’ve been leading with DiGRA’s AI Subcommittee. Over the past year we have moved towards concrete guidance on author disclosure, reviewer conduct, and AI use in conference spaces. I want to help carry that work through into policy after further consultation with the community, with the hope of making changes in time for the 2027 conference.
John J. Fennimore
I am a diligent and versatile scholar who has reached many interdisciplinary communities within and beyond academia. I worked for four years as a video game journalist for information platform Heavy, where I wrote over 1,000 articles and earned over 11 million pageviews. Keeping tabs on trends in the game industry was essential for timely coverage that people want to read. I interviewed and worked with many developers and public relations professionals for coverage at Heavy, including the developers of Pokémon GO at Niantic, Niantic’s Chief Marketing Officer Mike Quigley, Call of Duty: WWII and Helldivers 2 Composer Wilbert Roget II, and Mortal Kombat Co-creator Ed Boon. Back when I was a Ph.D. student at North Carolina State University, my colleague and I presented a workshop about queer identity in video games beyond representation and making games with the interactive fiction engine Twine for an employee appreciation event at Red Hat, Inc. While I was finishing my Ph.D. program, I organized a leading group of researchers for a panel at the Rhetoric Society of America 2026 conference where we explored how researchers understand the persuasive messages of games within and beyond Ian Bogost’s framework of persuasive games. If you elect me to be the Industry Relations Officer, I will strive to keep DiGRA one of the leading authorities in game studies as I foster collaboration with our industry partners and keep DiGRA at the forefront of industry trends.
Open Seat (3 available)
3x Open Seat responsible for such tasks as the Executive Board may assign to them, including conference organizing, publication help, or member outreach.
Stanisław (Staszek) Krawczyk
I work as Assistant Professor at the Department of Cultural Studies, SWPS University, Warsaw (Poland). Having attended DiGRA conferences since 2015, I was Track Chair at DiGRA 2025, Program Chair at CEEGS 2024, and Local Committee member at CEEGS 2025. Currently, I am a member of the DiGRA DEI Subcommittee and Inclusivity Officer in the board of DiGRA’s Central and Eastern European chapter. I am also co-editing two upcoming issues of “Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association”.
My research interests lie mainly in the local, national, and regional aspects of video games, especially in a comparative perspective. In addition, I study the role of multilingualism in scholarly communication. My interests in game studies and higher education studies intersect in the forthcoming special issue of the journal “Open Library of Humanities” called “Language Diversity in Game Studies”, of which I am the lead editor.
In line with this research focus, I would like to work for a DiGRA that is increasingly aware of the wealth of linguistic and regional traditions in games and game studies, providing a robust platform for academic conversations across our global differences. I would also like to help in making our association more and more accessible to newcomers. Among other things, this might involve collaborating with the Chapter Officer, Student Officer, and other interested parties in organizing accessible online events on a cross-national and cross-continental scale, as well as collecting resources for students and scholars coming to game studies from other fields (like here: https://ceegs.fsv.cuni.cz/games-studies-introduction/).
Daniel Vella
I’m the Director of the Institute of Digital Games at the University of Malta. I served as a track chair in 2020 and as organizing committee chair in 2025, when it was my great honour to bring DiGRA to Malta. I’m also a steering committee member for the Game Philosophy Network, and have served as both program chair of the Philosophy of Computer Games Conference (2016), as well as having been on the local organising committee for the inaugural Games and Literary Theory Conference (2013).
DiGRA has been a crucial venue and community for my own academic development. I’ve attended nine editions of the conference and many local chapter gatherings since my first in 2013. It’s been encouraging to see DiGRA grow into a much bigger community than the one I first knew, but this also creates challenges – often made worse by the political and economic difficulties academics increasingly face in many parts of the world.
On the board, I strive to ensure DiGRA matures into a more inclusive community. Everyone studying games, no matter their geographical, cultural or institutional situation, should not only feel that DiGRA can support them, but also that it is a venue they can meaningfully make their own.
Accordingly, I aim to work for DiGRA to develop from a top-down institution rooted in the Global North to a communally organised support network for a decentralised gathering of chapters with a global reach, guided by a politics of decoloniality and values of diversity, inclusion and solidarity.
