Lindsay is Knight Chair in Interactive Media and an associate professor at the University of Miami School of Communication. He is Vice President for the Higher Education Video Game Alliance and the 2019 recipient of the Games for Change Vanguard award. Lindsay’s book, Doing Things with Games, Social Impact through Design, is a well-received guide to game design. In 2020, he edited and authored Love and Electronic Affection: a Design Primer on designing love and affection in games.  

 His work has received awards and recognition from the Games for Change Festival, the Digital Diversity Network, the Association of Computing Machinery’s digital arts community , Black Enterprise and others. He’s designed scores of indie games, curated a variety of exhibits and organized several indie events. He authored or co-authored more than 50 papers, articles and book chapters on games since 2009. His creative work has been selected for showcase internationally including New York, Paris, Sao Paolo, Singapore, Chicago, Vancouver, Istanbul, and others. Lindsay curated or co-curated Blank Arcade, Smithsonian American Art Museum’s SAAM Arcade, the Games for Change Civic and Social Impact and others.

Jonathan Elmergreen is the Executive Director for the Higher Education Video Game Alliance, the international professional association for faculty, students, and institutions that work in video games, interactive media, and digital media. In his work with The Alliance, he serves members of the games and higher education community through field building, academic services, public advocacy, and policymaker engagement. Under Jonathan, membership has grown to represent over 310 universities worldwide, and HEVGA has become a global leader and voice in games through strategic global partnerships with governing bodies, agencies, foundations, associations, and organizations and a strong network of esteemed fellows, scholars, and members.

Andrew “Andy” Phelps is a professor at the Human Interface Technology Laboratory NZ (HITLabNZ) within the College of Engineering at the University of Canterbury. His work there is focused on virtual and augmented reality, games and education, and art and interactive media experiences of several varieties. In addition to his individual research and creative practice, supervision of students, and teaching activities, he is heavily engaged in building a new effort within the university, the Applied Immersive Gaming Initiative (AIGI), in collaboration with other faculty and staff at the HITLab, UC, and ChristchurchNZ, the city’s promotion and economic development agency.

Phelps also serves as a Professor in the Film & Media Arts division of the School of Communication at American University, and as Director of the AU Game Lab. 

In addition to his roles at American and Canterbury in research, administration and education, he currently serves as president of the Higher Education Video Game Alliance (HEVGA).

Celia Pearce is an award-winning game designer, artist, curator, author, teacher, and serial instigator. She co-founder and of IndieCade and the Playable Theatre Project, and currently holds a position as Associate Professor of Game Design at Northeastern University, where she has created games with student teams under the mantle of Paidia Studios and Pins&Needles. Her games have been featured at Come Out & Play, Different Games, Incubate, Smithsonian Indie Arcade, and BostonFIG Fest, where her game eBee (designed with Gillian Smith, Jeanie Choi and Isabella Carlsson) received the 2016 award for most Innovative Tabletop Game. Her books include Communities of Play (The MIT Press 2009) and IndieCade: A History — The Interdependence of Independence (ETC/CMU Press 2020), and she has authored/co-authored/edited numerous papers and book chapters as well as two other books. Her current research and creative practice builds on her pre-academia career as an experience designer for theme parks and is focused on the intersection between game design, live action roleplaying and theatre. Her performative and live action works have appeared at Living Games A Week in Boston, and The Night Cafe, a collection of live pieces around the heme of insomnia co-created by Kellian Pletcher-Adams and Lizzie Stark. She is a Higher Education Video Game Association (HEVGA) Fellow and was included in Game Advocacy’s “50 Over 50 Most Influential people in the Game Industry” in 2018.