The GI Direct for October 3, 2024

What's Happening at the GI

Happy October to all those who celebrate! With the arrival of spooky season, we're gearing up for the beginnings of the fall season here in Ontario, Canada, and that means colourful foliage, blessedly cool temperatures, and the arrival of more horror games at the GI.

If you have any recommendations on horror games to check out, let us know in the comments!

Research Updates

• GI Faculty Member Dr. John Mu?oz releases First Patent Design that focuses on enhancing public safety by providing police services with more information on how to de-escalate conflicts.

The GI Podcast

The GI Podcast is available on all major podcast platforms and features a wide variety of emerging and established scholars from diverse disciplines. Check out this episode featuring Dr. Emma Vossen, Research Impact and Mobilization Officer of the GI.

• 050: Knowledge Translation and Mobilization in Games Studies and Beyond with Dr. Emma Vossen

Project Spotlight

For this week's project spotlight, we're spotlighting a project from GI Alum Dr. Steve Wilcox, who developed a videogame as a chapter for his doctoral dissertation.

"Uncommon Places: The Multimodal Art of Embodied Invention" develops the concept of embodied invention, an epistemology and design philosophy that treats multimodal media such as comics and videogames as heuristics for translating knowledge between bodies, communities, and cultures. In classical rhetoric, invention refers to the art of discovering knowledge through the commonplaces those opinions, beliefs, and values hold that are common to a particular time and place. Rhetors would train themselves in invention by studying commonplace books texts that contained common expressions, phrases, and allegories of a particular community, region, or culture.

Drawing on phenomenology, semiotics, and media theory, this dissertation puts forward an embodied account of invention, one that correlates knowledge of the world with one's positions or place in the world. In order to make this point effectively, and to demonstrate its applicability to design, a portion of this dissertation is argued through a videogame called Allergies & Allegories.

Upcoming External Events

Check out the following UWaterloo events we've highlighted for our community.

1. Critical Tech Talk 10: Ecomedia and the Cost of Technological Progress [HYBRID] Monday, October 7, 4:30 pm - 6:00 pm. Join the Critical Tech Talk series to hear guest speaker Cajetan Iheka, Professor of English at Yale University, on the cost of technological innovation among communities of colour in the West and global south. This event will take place on campus in B1-271 and on Zoom.
2. Indigenous Speakers Series presents Jordan Jamieson [HYBRID] Wednesday, October 9, 3:00 pm - 4:20 pm. Learn more about Jordan Jamieson as he showcases his identity, activist work, and passions by infusing Indigenous culture and storytelling into his lyrics, themes, and rhythms.

Research Opportunities

Get involved with some exciting research projects and opportunities we've highlighted for our community!

1. Urban Planning CFP - Urban Planning, peer-reviewed journal indexed in the Web of Science-ESCI (Impact Factor: 1.7) and Scopus (CiteScore: 3.6), welcomes articles for the thematic issue "Geogames: The Future’s Language of Urban and Regional Planning". Read the full CFP.
2. CBB Seed Fund - The Centre for Bioengineering and Biotechnology (CBB) is launching round eight of its annual Seed Fund on October 1, 2024. Eligibility and application details are on website.

Member Testimonial

"The interdisciplinary environment at GI positively influenced my research by allowing me to collaborate with experts from different backgrounds. Coming from a psychological background, it was beneficial to engage with expertise in other fields. Compared to universities in my country, GI has more professionals working in the HCI field, providing a great opportunity to discover new tools and broaden my research approach." - Federica Gini , Visiting Graduate Student

Where to Find Us

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