News

The interdisciplinary Games and Narrative reading group is a newly launched initiative, imagined by Dr. Ken Hirschkop, Professor of English Language and Literature. With Dr. Hirschkop's guidance, graduate students who join the reading group will explore how the fields of Narrative Theory and Game Studies intersect and inform one another.

It is our great pleasure to formally announce that Dr. Neil Randall has been reappointed to serve as GI Executive Director for another five-year term.

Neil’s reappointment follows a period of exciting changes at the GI which has seen an Arts-based centre graduate to one of eight university-level multidisciplinary centres and institutes.

To start his new term, Neil (along with the rest of our members) will be busy with GI’s five-year review and renewal by the Senate coming up in 2020.

Pamela Maria Schmidt, Experimental Digital Media Master's student, will be taking over our Instagram from Nov. 28 - Dec. 3 to bring us along on her travels to Prague for the "Monsters: an Inclusive Interdisciplinary Project" conference organized by Progressive Connexions.

Tina Chan, Public Health and Health Systems MSc graduate, will be running a workshop at Pushing the Paradigm at the University of Toronto. Pushing the Paradigm focuses on broadening our understanding of mental health.

GI alum Séamas Weech, postdoc researcher in neuroscience and virtual reality, presented at SIGGRAPH 2019. SIGGRAPH is an annual conference for academia and industry in Los Angeles which focuses on global innovations, including what's next for computer graphics, animation, VR, gaming and new technologies.

Dr. Gustavo F. Tondello, a PhD graduate and instructional support coordinator of Waterloo’s School of Computer Science, as well as co-founder of MotiviUX, presented a paper on the Five Factor Player Traits Model at INTERACT 2019, the IFIP International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction.

Tina Chan, Public Health and Health Systems MSc candidate, appeared on CBC The National on September 6th, speaking about school-related stress and mental health struggles. Chan is the creator of the Panic Anxiety & Stress Support kit (PASS kit), designed to assist students in managing stress and destigmatize stress-related mental illnesses.

Dr. Lennart Nacke, Associate Professor and Director of the HCI Games Group, alongside the Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business, is co-organizing the Fluxible Education Summit (click here for more information on the summit).

Dr. Michael Barnett-Cowan, Associate Professor of Kinesiology and Director of the Multisensory Brain and Cognition lab, discussed the progression of virtual and augmented reality (VR, AR) technology and their real world application in an article in the Globe and Mail.