DiGRA Australia (DiGRAA) was founded in late 2013 as a local chapter of DiGRA. The board is comprised of a four-person executive (President, Vice-President, Secretary and Treasurer) and, currently, six board members.
2023–2024 Executive Members
| President – Mahli-Ann Butt | |
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Dr Mahli-Ann Butt is a Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne. She is a feminist ethnographer of digital cultures, researching questions of diversity in the cultures and industries of videogames. She received her BA (Hons) “Girlfriend Mode: Gamer Girlfriends, Support Roles and Affective Labour” (2016) from the University of New South Wales, and her PhD “Gaming Lifeworlds: Videogames in Culture” (2022) from the University of Sydney. She serves on the international executive board for DiGRA as the current Chapter Officer, and as the ‘PLAY’ theme research chair of the Sydney Games and Play Lab (2021-). Mahli-Ann is the lead editor on the forthcoming edited book collection “The Post-Gamer Turn”. She is also a collaborator on the “Emerging online safety issues: co-creating social media education with young people” project funded by the Australian eSafety Commissioner. Her research publications have appeared in journals such as Games and Culture, and books such as Decolonising the Digital: Technology as Cultural Practice (2018). |
| Vice President – Erin Maclean | |
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Erin Maclean is an early career researcher in the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research at Griffith University. With a background in journalism, she is interested in the intersections between popular media, journalism and social issues. Her recent work has focused on the tensions that arise in news as shooter videogames evolve in the way they represent gender. Erin is also a Technical Editor for the Journal of Games Criticism and was previously the Senior Vice Editor of Press Start, an international games studies journal for students and early career researchers. |
| Treasurer – Madeleine Antonellos | |
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Madeleine Antonellos is a late-stage PhD candidate in the School of Computing and Information Systems, at The University of Melbourne (Australia). Her thesis is on the future of digital careers, focusing on the professionalisation and digitisation of cosplay in Australia. As well as working as a Research Assistant in her faculty. Madeleine is an Assistant Ombudsperson for the DiGRA Ombuds Team, and has also been an editorial board member of Press Start. |
| Secretary – Stephanie Harkin | |
| Dr Stephanie Harkin is an early career researcher interested in girlhood and games, girls’ internet histories, and girls’ gaming and online cultures. She completed her Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Screen and Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne in 2018 and her PhD at Swinburne University of Technology in 2022. Her doctoral dissertation, titled “Girlhood Games: Gender, Identity, and Coming of Age in Videogames,” explored representations and invisible histories of girlhood in videogames. She is a research partner for the project “Esports Governance and Integrity,” which studies esports’ professional pipelines and integration into mega sporting events. She currently teaches in the Game Design program at RMIT’s School of Design and is a regular freelance contributor to GamesHub.com. Her research has been published in the journals Games and Culture, Game Studies, and Girlhood Studies and has appeared in the edited collection Love and Electronic Affection: A Design Primer (2020) by CRC Press. | |
2023–2024 Board Members
| Seat 1 – Brendan Keogh | |
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Brendan Keogh is an ARC DECRA Fellow in the Digital Media Research Centre at Queensland University of Technology. He researches videogame development skill transferability across informal, formal, and embedded sectors. His previous research has focused on the phenomenological and textual aspects of videogame play and culture. He is the author of A Play of Bodies: How We Perceive Videogames (MIT Press, 2018) and Killing is Harmless: A Critical Reading of Spec Ops The Line (Stolen Projects, 2012). |
| Seat 2 – Marcus Carter | |
| Seat 3 – Jacqueline Burgess | |
| Dr Jacqueline Burgess is an award-winning educator and researcher who is a Lecturer in International Business and the program coordinator of the Bachelor of Business at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia. Her research investigates narrative brands, with a focus on video games, their marketing and how consumers and audiences become emotionally connected to the stories these brands tell. Her research often involves collaboration with industry practitioners and has been published in multiple peer-review journals including the European Journal of Marketing, the International Journal on Media Management, Game Studies, Games and Culture and the Creative Industries Journal, presented at various academic conferences and been covered by local and international news outlets. | |
| Seat 4 – Kyle Moore | |
| Seat 5 – Cameron Edmond | |
| Seat 6 – Kayson Whitehouse | |
| Seat 7 – Malcolm Ryan | |
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Dr Malcolm Ryan is Course Director of the Game Design and Development program at Macquarie University and Director of the Games User Research Lab. His research involves user-experience design and evaluation of serious games with a focus on ethical decision-making, as well as applications of artificial intelligence to video games. Malcolm earned a BSc in Computer Science form UNSW, where he also completed his PhD in machine learning. His work aims to integrate understanding from AI, psychology, cognitive science, education and the arts to enrich the design of games and enable the creation of more sophisticated and engaging works. |
2022–2023 Board
President – Brendan Keogh
Vice President – April Tyack (elected), Erin Maclean (interim)
Treasurer – Madeleine Antonellos
Secretary – Benjamin Nicoll
Board members – Malcolm Ryan, Jane Mavoa, Ben Egliston, Premeet Sidhu, Gawain Lax, Mahli-Ann Butt
2021–2022 Board
President – Brendan Keogh
Vice President – April Tyack
Treasurer – Jane Mavoa
Secretary – Benjamin Nicoll
Board members – Fraser Allison, Malcolm Ryan, Ben Egliston, Erin Maclean, Premeet Sidhu, Gawain Lax, Madeleine Antonellos
2018–2021 Board
President – Brendan Keogh
Vice President – April Tyack
Treasurer – Jane Mavoa
Secretary – Benjamin Nicoll
Board members – Jane Cocks, Laura M Crawford, Marcus Carter, Fraser Allison, Malcolm Ryan
2015–2018 Board
President – Marcus Carter
Vice President – Laura Crawford
Treasurer – Bjorn Nansen
Secretary – Melissa Rogers
Board members – Thomas Apperley, Martin Gibbs, Brendan Keogh
Student representatives – Mahli-Ann Butt, Benjamin Nicoll
2012–2015 Board
President – Martin Gibbs
Vice President – Thomas Apperley
Secretary – Laura Crawford
Treasurer – Marcus Carter
Board Members – Bjorn Nansen, Melanie Swalwell, Stewart Woods, Angela Ndalianis