EGR Lab Members

Amanda Cote is an Associate Professor and Director of the Serious Games Certificate in the Department of Media & Information at Michigan State University. Her work focuses on the industry and culture of digital and analog games, with an emphasis on areas such as gender, identity, and representation; game development and labor; and collegiate esports.

Maxwell Foxman is an Associate Professor and Directors of the Game Studies Minor and Master’s of Immersive Media at the University of Oregon. His primary research focus is on how play manifests in non-game contexts—including social media, emerging media, politics and journalistic institutions. He is co-author, with Dr. David Nieborg, of Mainstreaming and Game Journalism from MIT Press.

Brandon Harris is an Assistant Professor of Sports Media at the University of Alabama’s Department of Journalism and Creative Media. He is broadly interested in labor, media production, gaming and esports, platforms, and the creative media industries. Dr. Harris researches cultural production, often focusing on the tensions and interplays between creators and commercial interests that structure norms, policies, and divisions of labor within the creator economy.

Waseq Rahman is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science, Design, and Journalism Department at Creighton University. His research focuses on media psychology and strategic communication, with a specific interest in designing persuasive messages in virtual and analog simulations. Waseq’s work with the EGR lab is interested in the strategic communication opportunities presented by gaming spectatorship and esports fandom.

Andrew Wilson is an Assistant Professor in the Harrington School of Communication at the University of Rhode Island. He studies the movement of political discourse in online gaming communities through memetic communication and other paratextual content. With the Esports and Games Research Lab (EGR), Andrew examines the ongoing institutionalization of collegiate esports, with a focus on diversity and inclusion issues. His work appears in New Media & Society, the Journal of Electronic Gaming and Esports, and First Monday.

Jared Hansen is an Assistant Professor in the College of Design at Iowa State University. His research interests are the history of video games and retro development. He is also a solo developer who has made games for retro hardware, as well as designed rules for TTRPGs https://jaredchansen.itch.io/. He is currently working on a book about the history of homebrew development during the height of the Nintendo DS.

Shane Burrell, Ph.D., is a media and communication scholar whose research explores virtual reality, avatar embodiment, and immersive media. With the EGR Lab, he investigated VR spectatorship, fandom, and identification in collegiate esports. He is a postdoctoral fellow at Chestnut Health Systems’ Lighthouse Institute, bridging immersive media and public health.

Nathan Rogers is a P.h.D. candidate at University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication. Their research analyzes tabletop roleplaying games as tools for people to express and explore marginalized or stigmatized identity. Nathan mostly performs qualitative style interviews and ethnographic observation, but recognizing the existence of marginalization and stigmatization of identities demands critical examination of related media and discourses where those processes occur.

Bri’s work focuses on the way that play can facilitate community formation, with a particular emphasis on live games and immersive theatre. Within this work, they study the impact of experience design and game mechanics such as onboarding, offboarding, and safety procedures onplayers’ experiences.

Will is a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon. Will’s research is on psychological reasons for engaging in communication in virtual space and marginalized communities.

Jeffery Fricke-Waters is a doctoral student in Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education (HALE) at Michigan State University. His research interests focus on student belonging, urban institutions, and how spaces promote learning/belonging such as esports centers. Prior to starting his Ph.D., Jeffery was a practitioner in higher education – he has experience in different functional areas including residence life, academic advising, and campus activities/esports.

Sophia Sinsheimer is a doctoral student in the Communication and Media Studies PhD program at the University of Oregon. Her interdisciplinary work focuses on manifestations of play in digital technoculture, social media, and games, with an emphasis on gender, sexuality, disability, labor, and cultural production.