About Geoffrey Rockwell

Introducing Shuji Watanabe

The GRAND Digital Humanities project welcomes Shuji Watanabe. He is an Associate Professor of Image Arts and Science visiting the University of Alberta from Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan. He is in Edmonton on sabbatical for 7 months with his family.

His research is around prototyping user generated content games. At the University of Alberta he is collaborating with GRAND researchers Geoffrey Rockwell and Jérémie Pelletier-Gagnon.

Professor Watanabe’s experience includes the planning and overseeing of various games such as Magic Pengel(/Garakuta Meisaku Gekijo Rakugaki Okoku)/, which was recommended by the Examination Committee at the 15th Media Arts Festival Media Art Interactive Division, and Minna no shiro, which won the Grand Prize at the First Annual Game Koshien Awards. He is an advocate of “ecological-sketch”, which visualizes rules and is a game design technique that begins from observations of the world as opposed
to imitating the works of others. He conducts research and development in not only traditional game development, but also in applicable fields such as education and crisis management appropriate for “gamification”. He is a member of the Research Committee, Japan Digital Game Association
and Steering Committee, Ritsumeikan Center of Game Studies.

Jérémie Pelletier-Gagnon: GRAND Scholar

2014-07-13 11.20.55

Jérémie Pelletier-Gagnon has been selected to be a 2014 GRAND Scholar associated with the Digital Humanities (DigHum) project.

Jérémie Pelletier-Gagnon is a former recipient of the Monbukagakusho Research Student Fellowship awarded by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. He conducted research at Wako University (Tokyo) on Japanese video game culture and game localization, expanding on the subject of his master degree previously obtained at McGill University. He blogs for Kinephanos where he is also currently co-editing a new journal issue on Japanese video games and the media mix.

He is currently enrolled at the University of Alberta in the programs of Comparative Literature and Humanities Computing where he has worked on GRAND projects since starting his Ph.D. program. Current projects for GRAND include the translation of the book Famicon to sono jidai, the organization of the coming Replaying Japan 2014 conference, liaison agent for the Bioware Video Game Archive and design for mobile games on the fAR-Play platform. His thesis subject focuses on the analysis of Japanese arcade culture, specifically through the social affordances provided by the interplay between game software, cabinet design and the space of the venue.

 

 

Todd Suomela: CLIR/DLF fellow at U of Alberta

The GRAND Digital Humanities project welcomes Todd Suomela to the University of Alberta where he will be working on digital initiatives and connecting with GRAND researchers.

ToddSuomela

Todd Suomela completed his PhD at the University of Tennessee in communication and information science in spring 2014.  His research focused on the framing of citizen science in the media and the organization of communication within citizen science projects.  At the University of Tennessee he worked on the DataONE project, a National Science Foundation DataNet project to integrate data in the environmental and biological sciences.  He is now starting work as a CLIR/DLF fellow in Data Curation for the Sciences and Social Sciences.  He will be working with the Digital Initiatives office at UAlberta libraries and the Humanities Computing Program on a variety of projects connected with data curation, the digital humanities, and web archives.  Although the weather may be different he is looking forward to learning more about the University of Alberta and Canada.  His personal website is at toddsuomela.com and he can be followed on Twitter @tsuomela.