DiGRA 2026 Keynotes

Recognised by Forbes and Fortune among the most powerful women in gaming, Reine Abbas is a Cartier Women’s Initiative and World Bank Innovation award winner. A pioneering game designer in middle east, educator, and entrepreneur, she has over two decades of experience shaping the Arab and global gaming industries.

She is the Founder & CEO of Spica Tech, Co-founder of Wixel Studios—Lebanon’s first independent game studio and Head of AI for Jeddah State (KSA). Reine also teaches Game Design and Animation at USEK, where she established the first programmes of their kind in the region. She currently leads Wings of Arabia, the first AAA game inspired by Saudi heritage and falconry culture.

Reine Abbas

Dr. Innocent (he/they) connects people and place through urban play. Working with the city as a material, his work traverses the analog and digital spaces we live in.

He calls his approach to speculative design ‘reworlding’ as it reimagines the creative, linguistic, cultural, social diversity of our world. Innocent is creator of 64 Ways of Being, an innovative augmented reality platform for listening, playing and exploring cities through new eyes, and leads a three-year study on post-pandemic impacts of creative placemaking.

Troy Innocent

Dr. Zhouxiang Lu is ranked among the world’s top 2% of researchers and is a leading expert in Chinese Studies and Global Sports Culture.
He is the author of A History of Competitive Gaming and A History of Sports Video Games: Building Virtual Athletic Fields in the Digital Age.

Dr. Lu is an Associate Professor in the School of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. He is also a Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the President of the Association of China-Ireland Academics, and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China.