Programme Committee
José P. Zagal
Dr. José P. Zagal is a Professor in the University of Utah’s nationally ranked Division of Games, where he teaches game design, ethics in videogames, and experimental games. Since teaching his first game course in 2000, he has supervised multiple award-winning student projects, and many of his former students now work at leading studios on acclaimed titles.
He has authored and edited numerous books and articles on topics including game ethics, game design, and role-playing games. His recent works include Seeing Red: Nintendo’s Virtual Boy (MIT Press, 2024), Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons (MIT Press, 2024), and The Routledge Handbook of Role-Playing Game Studies (Routledge, 2024).
Dr. Zagal has served as chair of the DiGRA (2014) and FDG (2015) conferences, and was a DiGRA board member from 2006–2015.
He was named a Distinguished Scholar by DiGRA and a Fellow of the Higher Education Video Game Alliance (HEVGA) for his contributions to games research.
He is currently Editor-in-Chief of Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association (ToDiGRA). He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Georgia Tech (2008), and an M.Sc. and B.S. in Engineering from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
EL Putnam
Dr. EL Putnam is Associate Professor in Digital Media at Maynooth University in Ireland. They are an artist-philosopher whose interdisciplinary practice explores the pleasures and tensions of digital technologies through performance art, moving image, and multimedia installation. Their work investigates the entanglements of human embodiment with computational systems, asking how we might find new modes of connection, encounter, and possibility within and against digital infrastructures.
Their recent monographs include Livestreaming as Aesthetic and Ethical Encounter (University of Minnesota Press, 2024) and The Maternal, Digital Subjectivity, and the Aesthetics of Interruption (Bloomsbury, 2022).
Recent exhibitions include Under the Feet of Shadows with author Mike McCormack shown at Mart Gallery, Dublin (2024) and CIACLA, Los Angeles (2025) and the solo exhibition PseudoRandom at Emerson Contemporary, Boston (2023).
They are a member of Mobius Artists Group (Boston), Bbeyond (Belfast), and AICA Ireland. Dr. Putnam holds a PhD in Aesthetics, Art Theory, and Philosophy from the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts.
Brendan Keogh
Dr.Brendan Keogh is an Associate Professor in the School of Communication at Queensland University of Technology.
He researches videogame production and consumption cultures and is the author of A Play of Bodies and The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist, and, as coauthor, The Unity Game Engine and The Circuits of Cultural Software.
