I have acted in the role of ad-hoc International Chapter Officer since January 2012 and believe that, in this capacity, I will be able to make an immediate and substantive contribution to DiGRA, especially in the areas of outreach and international liaison. DiGRA currently has nine regional or local chapters as far-reaching and diverse in geographical approach as Latin America, Finland, Turkey, Japan, Scotland and New York. A significant part of my role would be to further promote the importance of founding and maintaining local/regional Chapters, particularly amongst countries and regions that aren’t registered as such under the DiGRA umbrella, and to promote stronger advocacy, visibility and collaboration between individual Chapters. As Principal Editor of the international/intercontinental Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds and an internationally reknowned games and digital fiction scholar, I am in an ideal position to do so. I have extensive international network of contacts within games and digital media studies, which will allow me to communicate and collaborate across national and continental boundaries. I speak several European languages and have, through my various research activities, extensive experience in multilateral project management. I am aware of specific cultural needs that need to be considered in international collaborations.
As there doesn’t exist a UK Chapter at present, I have recently started to draw up, in collaboration with other UK members, a proposal for establishing DiGRA UK, and I hope to continue this work in a more official function on the DiGRA Board.
Bio:
Astrid Ensslin is Senior Lecturer in Digital Humanities in the School of Creative Studies and Media, Bangor University (UK). She teaches and researches videogame theory, analysis and design, as well as electronic literature, transmedial narratology and discourse studies. She has a background in Applied Linguistics, literary studies and digital media. Her main publications include The Language of Gaming (2011), Creating Second Lives (2011), Canonizing Hypertext (2007), and Language in the Media (2007). She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the Higher Education Academy, Principal Editor of the Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds and Co-Investigator of the Leverhulme-funded Digital Fiction International Network. She is currently working on a monograph on Literary Gaming for MIT Press and a co-edited volume on Analyzing Digital Fiction for Routledge. Her research activities, funded partly by the AHRC and the Leverhulme Trust, have been in collaboration with scholars and scientists from UK, Germany, Norway, Poland, Luxembourg, USA, India, Venezuela, New Zealand and Canada.
DiGRA Board Elections 2012
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Information on the DiGRA Association Rules and Bylaws can be found here:
http://www.digra-old-site.local/digradocuments/digrarules03
The elections will take place at the AGM being held at Nordic DiGRA on June 7, 2012 between 9-10 am, Technopolis Yliopistonrinne building, Kalevantie 2, Tampere, Finland. Provisions will be made for voting online. Details will be posted on the DiGRA newsfeed as well as the mailing list.