The Games Institute (GI) is an interdisciplinary research centre at the University of Waterloo, advancing the study of interactive and immersive technologies and experiences.
News Bites
Stay up-to-date with the latest GI activities. Our News Bites report on recent conferences, keynote addresses, and recent research activities of our members.
Research Spotlights
For more in-depth breakdowns of ongoing research projects, check out our Research Spotlights for full write ups of events and up close and personal testimonies with our researchers and members.
News
GI faculty member Dr. Shana MacDonald awarded Insight Development Grant
Games Institute (GI) faculty member Dr. Shana MacDonald (Communications Arts) successfully secured a $74, 232 grant for the “Exploring the visual culture of misogyny across material and digital archives” project.
GI members attended the 10th annual CHI PLAY conference
GI members present at The Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY). The conference takes place in Tampere, Finland from October 14 to October 17, 2024. GI members attended to present their papers, in-progress studies, and projects.
GI Faculty Member Dr. Igor Grossmann Awarded $1.5 Million Grant for His Interdisciplinary Project
Games Institute (GI) faculty member Dr. Igor Grossmann (Psychology), in collaboration with his team at Wisdom and Culture Lab, successfully secured a $1.5 million grant for their “Wisdom across cultures beyond traditional decision-making paradigms” project.
Blog
Designing for Accessibility: How a Graduate Student Makes Haptics Research Accessible
It can be very daunting for international students to leave their home countries, communities, friends, and families –upending their lives to further their education. For Ana Lucia Diaz de Leon Derby, finding a community during her master’s degree was crucial to her mental health and well-being.
Critical Play and Interdisciplinary Discourse at the Games Institute
Schmidt’s report outlines how the GI curates an interdisciplinary environment by encouraging staff, students, and faculty to critically play together—and how that act of play creates a common language where research ideas begin to flow. Looking back, the findings of this report continue to ring true today and we hope to continue sponsoring research excellence with this unique method of interdisciplinary creation.
Aspects of Play in Academia - Women of CHI PLAY 2023
From October 10th to October 13th, 2023, CHI PLAY took place at the Stratford School of Business and Interaction Design. In this retrospective, we sit down with GI faculty Drs. Cayley MacArthur, Jen Whitson and Leah Zhang-Kennedy who recount their experiences at CHI PLAY, including what makes it so unique, what they took away from the 2023 conference, and what advice they would give to those looking to attend in the future.