Dr Chloé Germaine Buckley is a Senior Lecturer in English at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her research in Game Studies focuses on analogue and rpg games, exploring materiality and games. She is also a member of the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies. Her publications include a chapter on “Weird” objects and props in LARP for a forthcoming book, Diseases of the Head and a journal article on the experience of space in horror LARP. Chloé is secretary of the Dark Door LARP club and writes and organises live-action roleplaying games. She has also written table-top rpg scenarios, including material for the indie game Cthulhu Hack.

Dr Paul Wake is Reader in English at Manchester Metropolitan University and a co-director of the Manchester Game Studies Network. His research interests include games and culture, games and communication, and, more recently, the use of game theory in the reading of literary texts. He has published articles on literary representations of casino games, 80s Adventure Gamebooks, and game design for communication. Paul also designs, uses, and plays games to start conversations about important societal topics.

Dr Tom Brock is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University. His research interests include play, games and social theory. He has authored publications on esports, player skill, failure, player labour and digital games consumption in peer-reviewed journals including, Games and Culture, Journal of Consumer Culture, and Information, Communication and Society. Tom is currently co-editing a Special Issue on ‘Digital Transformations in Gaming and Gambling’ for the Journal of Consumer Culture.

Senior Lecturer in Film at MMU. Researching Western, Science Fiction, and Horror in films, and the cross-over with games.

Dr Ben Challis is a Senior Lecturer in Music and Sound in the Department of Media, Manchester Metropolitan University. His research interests are focused on accessible design, interactivity and performance with music and sound. This extends into areas of game research and practice including non-visual gaming, serious gaming, game audio for non-linear narrative and models for analysing sound within interactive environments.

Mick Chesterman is a tutor in the Manchester Met Faculty of Education. He has a history of teaching media making skills to facilitate positive change for social groups. His PhD studies involve families exploring systems thinking and ecological concepts through digital game making.

Dr Jenny Cole is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University. She is interested in how bodies are represented in games and how experiences of virtual bodies may differ for marginalised groups. Jenny has published research on how women experience playing video games containing hypersexualised characters and how avatar choices may be influenced by how gender roles are experienced outside of game worlds.

Marsha Courneya is a Research Associate at MMU, and a Canadian writer, editor, and open licensing specialist based in Manchester. Starting out in indie film, she has experimented with feature length, shorts, web series, and immersive experiences and hopes to use open licensing for the benefit of growing story worlds through collective authorship.

Dr Jenny Cromwell is a Lecturer in Ancient History at Manchester Metropolitan University and a member of the Manchester Centre for Youth Studies. Within Game Studies, she is primarily interested in the reception of Ancient Egypt in video games and in archaeogaming. Additionally, she is also interested in the material culture and role of games and gaming in the ancient world.

Senior Lecturer at MMU. Researching nature-inspired algorithms, and how they lend themselves to the automation of games.

Dr Colin Harvey, is Lead Writer with Sony’s London Studio, having been co-writer and Senior Narrative Designer on the critically acclaimed PSVR game Blood and Truth. Dr Harvey is a Visiting Professor in Game Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Dr John Henry is a Lecturer in Computer Games at Manchester Metropolitan University. He has interdisciplinary research interests in Games, Serious Games, Gamification and Game Technology, along with sensors and the Internet of Things ecosystem. He is actively researching the applications of this merger of disciplines by considering games as an applied technology.

Dr John Lean is a Lecturer in Education at Man Met, working on the innovative cross-faculty Third Term programme. John is interested in the ways in which games and play intersect with education, including game-based learning with adults, gamification and playful experiential learning. He has particular interest in the ways in which the philosophy of higher education can be informed by games and play, and his recent PhD thesis explored this.

Dr. Qi Peng is a Lecturer in the Department of Economics, Policy and International Business at Manchester Metropolitan University. With a research background in in Sport Policy and Management, her current research project focuses on esports governance and the emerging intertwinement between ‘traditional’ sports and the esports industry.

Martin Smith is lecturer in Film & Media at MMU and a PhD student for the North of England Consortium for Arts and Humanities, researching scriptwriting and story development for games and immersive media.

Dylan Yamada-Rice is an artist and researcher specialising in storytelling and play. She works in a range of media including drawing, film photography and virtual Reality. Dylan studied Japanese Art History, semiotics and social science research methods before moving into experimental design. Dylan’s inter-disciplinary background has brought about a specialism in the role of culture in storytelling and use of emerging technologies, as well as how art and design practices can be combined with social science research methods to produce experimental means of collecting and analysing data.

Adam Cain is a Lecturer in Games Art at Manchester Metropolitan University’s School of Digital Arts, and is currently responsible for leading the Concept Art unit, Life Drawing workshops, and supporting various other units across SODA. Adam has been involved in the development of several successful Games Art courses at various levels across the UK. He is passionate about all forms of interdisciplinary creativity and design. He specialises in digital illustration and concept art, but is also interested in exploring the relationship between art and games in wider contexts such as narrative, identity and memory.

Dr. Rob Gallagher is a Lecturer in Film and Media in the Department of English at Manchester Metropolitan University. He is interested in how digital games reflect and shape popular understandings of identity, embodiment, and subjectivity. Much of Rob’s recent research has focused on auto/biographical videogames, and on how digital gameplay is represented in life-writing and literature. Alongside his academic publications, Rob has written on games and gaming for The Guardian, The New Inquiry, and The Architectural Review.

Dr Ben Gwalchmai is a Lecturer in Extended Realities working on the MA in Emergent Technologies in the School of Digital Arts. Ben studies, teaches, and makes Aumented Reality (AR) and his professional interests are in what is quickly becoming known as the Metaverse (AR, VR, XR).

Dr David Jackson is Lecturer in Digital Visualisation and post-doctoral research associate in the School of Digital Arts. His practice-led research explores the creative application of AI technology in narrative contexts and their effect on their audiences. His most recent major research project involved the exploration of a new type of interactive speech-led documentary, working on Audiences with a Hero, with partners Forever Holdings and Bright White. Elements of this work were informed by his AHRC post-doctoral fellowship, (2018, NWCDTP), and the development of the Storybox conversational agent software and the D-PAF framework for conversational storytelling. Involvement on Obsidisorium at the MIRA Festival with Prof. Toby Heys continues to explore the emerging impact of digital technology and artificial intelligence on storytellers.

Dr. Daniel Joseph is a Senior Lecturer of Digital Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University, where he researches the production, distribution, and consumption of games, apps, and platforms. Daniel's prior research has focused on a variety of topics such as cultural and industrial policy related to the production of independent digital games, the cultural politics of Skyrim mod making, and the political economy of loot boxes and battle passes. Daniel is a member of the App Studies Initiative where his current research focuses on digital inequalities and the effects of economic and cultural imperialism on the production and consumption of game apps. Daniel also is a freelance writer for magazines such as Motherboard, Jacobin, Real Life Mag, and Briarpatch Magazine.

Dr Connah Kendrick is a lecturer in Games at MMU. His interests are in mixed reality technologies and game fundamentals. His research focuses on healthcare and AI, but uses approaches commonly found in games to improve healthcare system in Tech for Good.

Beth Senior is the Academic Lead for the Foundation Year and Outreach at the School of Digital Arts (SODA). As Outreach Lead, Beth supports the team in developing their recruitment and widening participation, both locally and further afield. Originally training as a three-dimensional designer, Beth has over 19 years experience of teaching games and creative digital media. With an MA in Animation, she has presented at educational conferences and had her work included in a documentary looking at British Women in Animation. Beth is passionate about widening participation in the arts and decolonising the curriculum in art subjects, looking at how it can be embedded into non-traditional discourse spaces and how our creative practice can be used to illustrate culture and drive positive societal change.

Dr Kirsty Bunting has been a Senior Lecturer in English at Man Met Uni since 2009. She has published widely on the topic of collaborative literary networks and methodologies, especially those of late-nineteenth century authors. Kirsty writes bestselling commercial romantic fiction (as Kiley Dunbar) for publishers Hera Canelo, Audible and Saga Egmont, and was shortlisted for the RNA Romantic Comedy Novel Award 2021. Her latest research focuses on co-authored romantic fiction, interactive romantic fiction/gamebooks and romantic games. She runs the #LoveWritingMCR events series with Manchester Writing School colleagues.

Rachel Genn is a neuroscientist, artist and writer who has written two novels: The Cure (2011) and What You Could Have Won (2020). She was a Leverhulme Artist-in-Residence (2016), creating The National Facility for the Regulation of Regret, which spanned installation art, VR and film (2016-17). She has written for Granta, 3:AM Magazine, and Hotel, and is working on Hurtling, a hybrid collection of essays about the neuroscience, art and abjection of artistic reverie. She’s also working on a binaural experience exploring paranoia, and a collection of non-fiction about fighting and addiction to regret. Genn works at the Manchester Writing School and the School of Digital Arts.