Professor Tanya Krzywinska
Professor of Digital Games
Joining forces with Steve Jackson, a veteran of the games industry, in 2005, Tanya developed and convened a successful MA focused on videogame design, boasting 60% graduate employability in the games industry. Subsequently, a suite of BAs in Games Design were added to her portfolio of course development, most recently a single honours award in games design. She has joined Falmouth University to bring her expertise and experience to the development of a Digital Games Academy that will offer a suite of Games BA(Hons) and BSc(Hons) courses in Digital Game Art, Animation, Design, Music, Programming and Writing in 2014. She supervises PhD students on the Games Doctoral programme.
Over the course of her career, Tanya has had published many articles and books on screen-based and interactive media fiction. She became president of the Digital Games Research Association in 2006 and has been the editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed journal Games and Culture, published by Sage https://journals.sagepub.com/home/gac. The journal has an impact factor of 1.574 and a 5-year impact factor of 1.685. She is also an artist with a studio at Krowji, Redruth. www.tanyakrzywinska.com

tanya.krzywinska@falmouth.ac.uk | |
Telephone | 01326 259357 (ext 59357) |
Qualifications
Qualifications
Year | Qualification | Awarding body |
---|---|---|
2012 | MA Authorial Illustration (distinction) | Falmouth University |
1996 | PhD | University of North London |
1992 | MA Modern Drama & Film | Polytechnic of North London |
1988 | BA (Hons) Modern European Literature and Film & Drama (2:1) | Reading University |
Honours and awards
Year | Description |
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2009 | MA Digital Games Theory & Design Dr Krzywinska developed for Brunel University was short-listed for Times Higher Innovation in Teaching in the Arts |
2015 | DiGRA Distinguished Scholar award |
2017 | Winner of the Staff Excellence Award in the Outstanding Innovation or Research Category |
2020 | Elected as Higher Education Video Game Alliance Fellow |
Membership of external committees
- Digital Games Research Association
- International Gothic Association
- Editor-in-Chief of journal Games and Culture (Sage)
Research Interests
Research interests and expertise
Tanya's research interests are largely within the domains of digital games, transmediality and immersion, mixed and augmented reality in terms of content and experience. She has be working with museums and heritage providers, co-designing apps and experiences focused on interpreting their collections in new ways. She is particularly interested in visual storytelling in games and virtual spaces, and virtual modes of creative and artistic expression. She is concerned with how digital assets can come together to make compelling experiences for audiences, users and players. She has a wealth of expertise in applying critical theory to games and other media, and has a strong research interest in fantasy, horror and the gothic more generally, as well as gender and representations.
Research topics
- Games Theory & Design
- Augmented and Mixed Reality
- games and virtual spaces as modes of artistic expression; Dark Economies; visual languages and visual storytelling in digital contexts; Monsters.
Research Outputs
Publications and research outputs
Article
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Book Section
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Conference or Workshop Item
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Project
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Research Students
Current research students
Jack Hackett (Falmouth University)
Justin Parsler (Brunel University)
Rory Summerley (Falmouth University)
Steph Comley (Falmouth University)
Previous student supervision
Supervised 7 PhD students to completion as first supervisor at Brunel.
Indicative (shortened) titles of PhDs supervised and currently supervised:
- Heroic Quest: A comparative study on the relationship between Old Norse and Old English heroic literature and Western Role-Playing Videogames
- Move Fast, Think Slow: Videogaming and the Embodied Experience of Time
- Sexuality, Addiction and the Wonderful World of Walt Disney
- Suspension and Disbelief in VideoGames
- Space as a means of Expression in Videogames
- Taxonomies of Agency in Digital Games
- Glitching, Cheating, Trolling: Transgression in Digital Games
- The Besieged Ego in the Horror Film
- Girls and Women as consumers of games
Number of research students supervised to completion
11Research degrees examined
External Examiner for six PhDs at Buckinghamshire Chilterns University, Waikato University NZ, Adelaide University Aus, two at Portsmouth University, University of West of England, and an MPhil at Birkbeck University. Internal Examiner for seven PhDs and two MPhils.
Number of research degree examinations
15Teaching
Areas of teaching
- Digital Games; Film & Media Studies; Popular & Visual Culture
Business Engagement
Consultancy and facility services
Feb 2010-March 2011: Commissioned by UK Council for Internet Child Safety to write advisory document for UK Government policymakers informing them about contemporary videogames.
Professional engagement
Engagement with professional associations and societies
Editorial Board member for the following journals:
Horror Studies; Game Studies; Eudalmos; Games and Culture; Games and Simulation Journal of Virtual Worlds; Intensities; GAME
Research Association work
Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) Executive Board Member (elected June 2005). www.digra.org President DiGRA, 2006-2010.
Host organiser DiGRA Biannual conference, 2009.
Member of Human-Computer Interaction Research Group (Brunel University) http://hcdi.brunel.ac.uk
Member of International Gothic Research Association.
Professional esteem indicators
Year | Description |
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No data | Invited speaker, Contemporary Fiction Seminar, Institute of English Studies, Birkbeck, University of London, February 2013. |
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