About Me

I’m an Assistant Professor in the Department of History, an Assistant Professor at Matrix: The Center for Humane Arts, Letters & Social Sciences Online, and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies, and Media  at Michigan State University.  I also hold adjunct appointments in a wide variety of departments and programs at MSU including Museum Studies and American Studies.

In addition, I’m a Principal Investigator in the Games for Entertainment & Learning Lab, and co- founder of both the undergraduate Specialization and Game Design Development and the MA in Serious Game Design at Michigan State University.  My primary area of research is in the domain of cultural heritage informatics, specifically serious games for cultural heritage learning, outreach, and engagement.

At Michigan State University, I teach in a wide variety of areas including cultural heritage informatics, user centered & user experience design, game design, serious game design, game studies, social history of popular culture, history of computers and computation, and ancient Egyptian social history & archaeology.

In addition to my academic work, I’ve has written numerous technical trade books for publishers such as Wiley, Sybex, and O’Reilly on interactive design and user centered/user experience design.

When I’m not being all professorial, I’m a world class comic book nerd (Killowog is so my favorite Green Lantern), a sci-fi dork (I’ll argue to the grave that Tom Baker is the best Doctor ever), and an avid player of all sorts of games (digital, board, and tabletop).