Speaker Bios
Ian Bogost
Dr. Bogost is the co-founder of Persuasive Games, an independent video game studio that makes games about social and political issues, including airport security, Christmas shopping, the global petroleum market and disaffected workers. Bogost speaks at conferences around the world about videogame theory and design. Bogost’s company has a relationship with the New York Times, in which they are publishing news games on the online op-ed page as part of the editorial content. He is an assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Check out this video of Dr. Bogost talking about Persuasive Games on The Colbert Report.
Judd Ethan Ruggill
Dr. Ruggill teaches for the department of media arts at the University of Arizona. His work has appeared in a variety of scholarly books, journals, and periodicals, including Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, The International Digital Media and Arts Association Journal, FLOW, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. He also co-directs the Learning Games Initiative, a trans-disciplinary, inter-institutional research group that studies, teaches with and builds computer games.
Ken S. McAllister
Dr. McAllister is associate professor of rhetoric at the University of Arizona and co-director of the Learning Games Initiative. He has been executive director of Alternative Educational Environments, co-chair of the International Digital Media and Arts Association’s Game Studies Special Interest Group, and is currently a member of the National Science Foundation’s iPlant Collaborative. His book Game Work: Language, Power, and Computer Game Culture (U. of Alabama Press, 2004) is now in its second printing and received a Choice Outstanding Academic Title award in 2005. He is presently working on a new book with Judd Ruggill titled Defining Games: Coming to Terms with a New Medium.
Jason Cerchie (Rez Menoptra)
Mr. Cerchie is a visual architect and 3-D artists with the Electric Sheep Company. He took a roundabout path to getting a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Arkansas School of Architecture. Along the path were stints as a baker, a professionally touring musician and an artisan stonemason. Now he spends his time taking projects from two-dimensional conceptual art to fully immersive three-dimensional environments.
Sunny Cerchie (Endira Udal)
Ms. Cerchie was born and raised in one of the nation’s folk culture capitals, and received an interesting childhood education ranging from 15 years of ballet training to soap-making to stone masonry. She went on to receive a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Arkansas School of Architecture, after which she discovered Second Life. She spends her days taking projects from two-dimensional art and three-dimensional conceptual models to full-size “sim” builds.
Kenneth J. Knoespel’s
Dr. Knoespel’s work spans issues of institutions facing and embracing technological change, science and visualization and the methodology of early scientific commentary. His current research includes work on diagrams within architecture, science and technology. He is revising a book on allegory and Renaissance science and completing research on a project dealing with science and culture in Sweden and Russia in the early modern period. He is the chair of and a professor in the School of Literature, Communication and Culture at Georgia Institute of Technology.