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LINDSAY GRACE & MIRJAM ELADHARI APPOINTED TO BOARD OF DIRECTORS

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – March 19, 2018 – The Higher Education Video Game Alliance (HEVGA) today announced the appointment of Lindsay Grace and Mirjam Eladhari to the Board of Directors. Both will serve on the Executive Committee, with Grace as Vice President and Eladahri in a non-officer role, filling vacant positions previously held by founding board members and fellows Constance Steinkuehler and Tracy Fullerton.

“Lindsay and Mirjam are two colleagues who have done phenomenal work in a wide array of areas and roles for decades combined. Their passion and commitment to furthering our community is clear and will push us forward in new directions. Lindsay and Mirjam have long been leaders in the field and are uniquely equipped to focus on several of our key goals, particularly the continued expansion of HEVGA’s footprint internationally. In 2017, we held our first international meeting on the island of Gotland in Sweden during the Gotland Game Conference (GGC) at Uppsala University. This year HEVGA will again partner with GGC and Uppsala to hold a two-day symposium co-located with the conference. Lindsay and Mirjam’s experience will be indispensable as we grow our capacity in Europe and beyond. Our initiatives, committees, and reports will benefit greatly from their knowledge as we build a rich network and community pushing the collective and interdisciplinary boundaries of our field. I respect them both deeply and truly look forward to serving alongside them,” said Andy Phelps, President.

In addition to the appointment of Grace and Eladhari, the board of directors will expand to seven members later this year. Details on the election process will be available this spring.

LINDSAY GRACE
Lindsay is an associate professor at American University and founding director of the American University Game Lab and Studio. He was the Fall 2017 Visiting Knight Chair at the University of Miami. 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 has published 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. He has given talks at the Game Developers Conference, SXSW, Games for Change Festival, the Online News Association, the Society for News Design, and many other industry events.

Academic liason and former vice president (2015-2016) for the Global Game Jam™, Lindsay also served on the board for the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) between 2013-2015.

MIRJAM ELADHARI
Mirjam Palosaari Eladhari is a game designer, researcher, and developer who entered the video game industry as a programmer in 2000. Her dissertation work (Teesside, 2010) explored characterisation and story construction in MMO’s focusing semi-autonomous avatars. Having focused on intelligent agents and story construction, her present research foci are AI based game design and story-making games. Her approach includes exploration of the game design space through experimental prototypes. She has worked as a game designer in various research projects, most recently in C2Learn. Mirjam has taught game design and related topics since 2004, and is now a senior lecturer at the department of Media Technology at Södertörn University in Stockholm, Sweden.