Featured Guest Speakers
Vanessa Brasfield she/they
Vanessa / PleasantlyTwstd is a Community Coordinator at Crystal Dynamics, and a part-time content creator on Twitch, focused on community building, charity, and game analysis. Her passion is in activism for Black & queer communities, alongside gaming design and development focusing on accessibility and engagement. They challenge run and speed run in her free time, and occasionally write strategy guides and about gaming at large when their cats aren’t sitting on her laptop.
Amanda Cullen she/her
Amanda L.L. Cullen is a User Researcher at Blizzard Entertainment. She received her PhD in 2022 from the University of California, Irvine, where she wrote her dissertation on gender, labor, and authenticity in video game live streaming.
Drew Harry he/him
Drew Harry is a researcher of computer mediated community experiences. He was the VP of Research & Data at Twitch from 2014-2024. He received a PhD from the MIT Media Lab and an Electrical Engineering degree from Olin College.
Christopher Persaud he/they
Christopher Persaud is a Research Scientist at Intel Labs, where his work focuses on Responsible AI, STS, and Internet Studies. He is a core member of the Content Creator Scholars Network. He regularly collaborates with colleagues across academia and industry on work related to marginalized creators and cultural production, the cultural and social dimensions of AI, and critical internet studies.
Veronica Carmen Ripley she/her
Veronica Ripley is a content creator from Monterey California. Veronica earned a BA in Music at CSU Monterey, and began live streaming STEM games in 2016 under the name Nikatine. By 2019, she shifted her content to roleplay, and became an official Twitch ambassador. Veronica founded several companies and a social community for trans gamers called Transmission Gaming.
Bo Ruberg they/them
Bo Ruberg, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Irvine and the co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies. Their research explores gender and sexuality in digital media with a focus on LGBTQ issues in video games. They are the author of three books: Video Games Have Always Been Queer (NYU Press, 2019); The Queer Games Avant-Garde: How LGBTQ Game Makers Are Reimagining the Medium of Video Games (Duke University Press, 2020); and Sex Dolls at Sea: Imagined Histories of Sexual Technologies (MIT Press, 2022). They have also co-edited two volumes: Queer Game Studies (University of Minnesota Press, 2017) and Real Life in Real Time: Live Streaming Culture (MIT Press, 2023).
Christine H. Tran they/she
Christine H. Tran is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Digital Media and Game Studies in the University of Toronto Missisauga. Their past research explores the interplay of domesticity and family life in the careers of racialized and gendered live streamers. Christine's next line of research explores how these sites of practice play out with the ascent of AI and other influencer cultures. Their work can be read in journals such as Television & New Media, Communication, Culture & Critique and New Media & Society.
Donghee Yvette Wohn she/her
Dr. Yvette Wohn is an associate professor at NJIT and director of the Social Interaction Lab. Her research is in the area of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) where she studies the characteristics and consequences of social interactions in online environments such as livestreaming, esports, virtual worlds/metaverse, and social media.
Jordan Youngblood he/him
Jordan Youngblood is an associate professor in the English department at Eastern Connecticut State University. His work focuses on the intersections between gender, sexuality, and digital media, particularly in video games, and can be found in a variety of collections and journals.