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Professor Tanya Krzywinska

Professor of Digital Games

Tanya started playing computer-based games on Usenet when working at the Digital Equipment Corporation while doing her Masters in film. Several years later, after completing her PhD and teaching film and media, she realised that there was very little academic writing about video games and decided to remedy that. She gave her earliest paper on horror games at one of the first-ever academic conferences on games in 2000 and, soon after, edited with Geoff King the first collection of essays to be devoted to the study of the relationship between games and cinema. Since then, she has focused her attention mainly on games, with a particular interest in developing the use of games technologies and design in heritage contexts. She has also maintained her enthusiasm for the gothic and horror generally across various media. 

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
  • My website
Emailtanya.krzywinska@falmouth.ac.uk
Telephone01326 259357 (ext 59357)
  • Qualifications
  • Research Interests
  • Research Outputs
  • Research Students
  • Teaching
  • Business Engagement
  • Professional engagement

    Qualifications

    Qualifications

    YearQualificationAwarding 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

    YearDescription
    2009

    MA Digital Games Theory & Design Dr Krzywinska developed for Brunel University was short-listed for Times Higher Innovation in Teaching in the Arts
    2009.

    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

    Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144, Phillips, Tim ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7762-9742, Parker, Alcwyn ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2374-1229 and Scott, Michael ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6803-1490 (2020) From Immersion’s Bleeding Edge to the Augmented Telegrapher: A Method for Creating Mixed Reality Games for Museum and Heritage Contexts. ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage, 13. ISSN 978-1-4503-9999-9/18/06 (In Press)
    [img]

    Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144 (2016) Dangerous Agencies: Norns, Games and Aesthetics of Emergence. Dangerous Women Project, no volume number. ISSN no Issn
    [img]

    Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144 (2016) Dangerous Agencies: Norns, Games and Aesthetics of Emergence. Dangerous Women Project, no volume number. ISSN no Issn
    [img]

    Perez Ferrer, Blanca, Colton, Simon, Powley, Edward ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7317-7304, Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144, Geelhoed, Erik ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7152-1186 and Cook, Michael (2016) Gamika: Art Based Game Design. Art/Games, Beginnings. ISSN n/a
    [img]

    Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144 (2015) The Gamification of Gothic Coordinates. Revenant: Critical and Creative Studies of the Supernatural, 1 (1). pp. 58-78. ISSN 2397 8791
    [img]

    Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144 (2015) Gaming Horror’s horror: Representation, Regulation and Affect in Horror Videogames. Journal of Visual Culture, The Design and Componentry of Horror (14(3)). pp. 293-297. ISSN 14704129
    [img]

    Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144 (2014) Conspiracy Hermeneutics: The Secret World as Weird Tale. Well Played: a journal on video games, value and meaning, 3 (2). ISSN ISSN 2164-344X (Print) ISSN 2164-3458 (Online)
    [img] [img]

    Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144 (2006) Blood Scythes, Festivals, Quests and Backstories: World Creation and Rhetorics of Myth in World of Warcraft. Games and Culture, 1 (4). pp. 383-396. ISSN 1555-4139

    Book Section

    Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144 (2019) “Everything is True”: Urban Gothic meets the Chthulucene in Multiplayer Online Game, The Secret World. In: The New Urban Gothic: Global Gothic in the Age of the Anthropocene. Palgrave Mamillan, Basingstoke. ISBN 978-3-030-43777-0 Item availability may be restricted.
    [img]

    Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144 (2018) Playing the Intercorporeal: Frankenstein's Legacy for Games. In: Global Frankenstein. Studies in Global Science Ficiton . Palgrave Macmillian UK, London, pp. 283-300. ISBN 9783319781419
    [img]

    Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144 (2017) Gothic American Gaming. In: Cambridge Companion to the American Gothic. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 229-242. ISBN https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316337998
    [img]

    Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144 (2016) Formations of Player Agency and Gender in Gothic Video Games. In: Women and the Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion. Edinburgh Companions to the Gothic . Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh University, pp. 214-227. ISBN 9780748699124 (hdb) 9780784699131 (webready PDF) 978 1 4744 0951 3 (pub) Item availability may be restricted.
    [img] [img]

    Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144 and Brown, Douglas ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6662-6629 (2015) Games, Gamers and Posthumanism. In: The Palgrave Handbook of Posthumanism in Film and Television. Palgrave Handbooks . Palgrave Macmillan, London, UK, pp. 192-201. ISBN 9781349577019 Item availability may be restricted.
    [img]

    Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144 and Brown, Douglas ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6662-6629 (2015) Games, Gamers and Posthumanism. In: The Palgrave Handbook of Posthumanism in Film and Television. Palgrave Macmillian UK, London, pp. 192-201. ISBN 9781137430328 (online) 9781349577019 (print)
    [img]

    Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144 and Brown, Douglas ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6662-6629 (2015) Online Games and Genre. In: International Encyclopedia of Digital Communication and Society. John Wiley & Sons/Blackwell, Oxford. ISBN 978-1-118-29074-3 Item availability may be restricted.
    [img] [img]

    Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144 (2014) Digital Games and the American Gothic: Investigating Gothic Game Grammar. In: A companion to American Gothic. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 503-516. ISBN 9780470671870 Item availability may be restricted.
    [img]

    Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144 (2013) Transmedial Aesthetics: Where form and content meet - Film and Videogames. In: Content and Representation. International Companions to Media Studies . Blackwell-Wiley, Oxford, UK. ISBN 978-1405193566

    Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144 (2012) The Strange Case of the Misappearance of Sex in Videogames. In: Computer Games and New Media Cultures: A Handbook of Digital Games Studies. Springer, Heidelberg, Germany. ISBN 978-94-007-2777-9
    [img]

    Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144 (2009) Movie-games and Game-movies: Towards an aesthetics of transmediality. In: Film Theory and Contemporary Hollywood Movies. Routledge/AFI, New York, USA. ISBN 978-0415962629

    Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144 (2008) Arachne v. Minerva: The Spinning out of long narrative in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and World of Warcraft. In: Third Person: authoring and exploring vast narratives. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. ISBN 9780262232630

    Conference or Workshop Item

    Scott, Michael James ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6803-1490, Parker, Alcwyn ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2374-1229, Powley, Edward ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7317-7304, Saunders, Rob, Lee, Jenny, Herring, Phoebe, Brown, Douglas ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6662-6629 and Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144 (2018) Towards an Interaction Blueprint for Mixed Reality Experiences in GLAM Spaces: The Augmented Telegrapher at Porthcurno Museum. In: Proceedings of the 32nd BCS Human Computer Interaction Conference, 2-6 July, 2018, Belfast, NI.
    [img]

    Book

    Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144, MacCallum-Stewart, Esther and Parsler, Justin, eds. (2011) Ring Bearers: The Lord of the Rings Online as Intertextual Narrative. Manchester University Press, Manchester, UK. ISBN 978-0719082924

    Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144 and Atkins, Barry, eds. (2007) Videogame, Player, Text. Manchester University Press, Manchester, UK. ISBN 978-0-7190-7400-4

    Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144 and King, Geoff (2005) Tomb Raiders and Space Invaders: Video Games in the 21st Century. I B Tauris, unknown. ISBN 978-1850438144

    Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144 and King, Geoff, eds. (2002) ScreenPlay: cinema/videogames/interfaces. Wallflower Press, unknown. ISBN 190336423X

    Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144 and King, Geoff (2000) Science Fiction Cinema: From Outerspace to Cyberspace. Wallflower Press, unknown. ISBN 978-1903364031

    Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144 (2000) A Skin for Dancing In: Witchcraft, Possession and Voodoo in Film. Flicks Books, unknown. ISBN 978-0275976552

    Project

    Geelhoed, Erik ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7152-1186 and Krzywinska, Tanya ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0744-4144 (2017) Games Research Opportunities and Research Excellence in Cornwall and the EU (project): GRO / ERA. [Project] (Unpublished) Item not available from this repository.

    Events

    YearDescription
    2009

    DiGRA Conference 2009

    Externally funded research grants information

    Year startingYear endingProject titleFunderCurrencyValueCollaboratorsHESA Category
    2003
    No data
    Tomb Raiders project
    AHRC
    No dataNo dataNo data
    1 DIUS Research Councils
    2017
    2018
    The Augmented Telegrapher: Mixed reality in a Museum context
    AHRC
    No dataNo data

    Ed Powley, Michael Scott, Alcwyn Parker

    1 DIUS Research Councils
    2013
    2019
    ERA Games Research Project
    EU
    No dataNo dataNo data
    6 EU government bodies
    2018
    2019
    The Augmented Telegrapher_Follow-in
    AHRC
    No dataNo data

    Porthcurno Telegraph Museums; Cornwall Museums Partnership

    1 DIUS Research Councils
    2018
    No data
    SWCTN
    UKRI
    No dataNo data

    UWE, Bath Spa, Plymouth Uni, Kaleider, Watershed

    1 DIUS Research Councils
    2019
    No data
    wAVE
    Coastal Communities
    No dataNo data

    CMP

    4 UK central government bodies/local authorities, health & hospital authorities

    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

    11

    Research 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

    15

    Teaching

    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

    YearDescription
    No data

    Invited speaker, Contemporary Fiction Seminar, Institute of English Studies, Birkbeck, University of London, February 2013.
    Invited speaker. Film Studies programme Falmouth University College. June 2010 & June 2011
    Keynote International Gothic Association, Lancaster University, July 2009
    Keynote Digital Arts, University of Falmouth, September 2009
    Keynote Gaming After Dark, University of Montreal, Canada June 2009
    Digital Cultures, University of Magdeburg, Germany, March 2009;
    Future and Reality of Gaming, University of Vienna, October 2008.
    Invited speaker ‘Horror and Videogames’ Institute of Education, London November 2007.
    Invited speaker AURORA Animation Festival Norwich, November 2007.
    Keynote speaker: ‘Games, Meaning and Methodology’ Knowledge Lab, London, January 26th 2007.
    Keynote speaker: ‘Witchcraft and Paganism in the Media’ Harvard University, Boston, US. June 2006.
    Keynote speaker: ‘Technology and Identity’ Buckinghamshire and Chilterns University College. May 2006.
    Keynote speaker: ‘Bring Your own Sub‐text: Social Life, Human Experience and the World of Joss Whedon’
    Huddersfield University, June 2005.
    Invited Speaker: New Femininities: Third seminar ‘consuming new femininities’ University of East London. July
    2005.
    Invited Speaker: DiGRA biannual conference, Vancouver, Canada ‘British Game Studies: A snapshot’ for international panel of speakers each outlining contemporary game studies at national level, June 2005.
    Invited Speaker: Playful Subjects Symposium, UWE, May 2005.
    Invited Speaker: ‘Animating the Game World: Textures of Reality’ NFT/Royal College of Art/British Animation Awards Animation Festival, Feb 2005

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