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Staff Profiles

The games design programmes are taught by a team of experienced games designers and pioneers of games as an academic subject. Their expertise ranges from academia through to many different levels of the games industry, and they all share a deep commitment to student learning combined with an intense passion for the subject that they teach and the success of their students.

Professor Steve Jackson - Games industry legend and co-founder of both successful games studio Lionhead with Peter Molyneux and high street chain Games Workshop with Ian Livingstone, Steve Jackson has over 30 years of experience in the worlds of role-playing and video games. He is the co-creator and author of the famous 'Fighting Fantasy' series of books, and has also written on games for the Daily Telegraph. Extremely well connected and highly regarded within the modern games industry, Steve teaches students about the business reality of games, and introduces them to a wide array of contacts on our industry speakers programme.

Professor Tanya Krzywinska - A pioneer of the study of digital games, Tanya has an impressive academic background in Film, TV, Literature and Art criticism. She authored several of the books that established games as an academic subject, and remains on the forefront of debates in the field, publishing work regularly on various aspects of games. She is ex-president of the Digital Games Research Association and on the editorial board of many games research journals. Tanya convenes our postgraduate and research programmes, and teaches both Theory and Application.

Justin Parsler - Justin has earned a living for the past 25 years designing and running games. Currently also employed as a Senior Consulting Designer at UK games studio Mediatonic, he is working on many projects for clients such as Disney and Electronic Arts, as well as on major IP franchises. His academic record is almost as strong as his industry credentials, with published work on World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online and more. Justin teaches the Design components of our courses, and is currently completing research into the nature of agency and player empowerment in games.

Dr Douglas Brown - Since graduating from Oxford University and working for Square-Enix on several high-profile titles including Final Fantasy XII, Doug moved into academia to pursue a lifelong fascination with how games, stories and imagination work together, recently completing a PhD on games and the suspension of disbelief. He has published work in journals and several chapters of edited collections, generally focusing on the connections between games and narrative. Doug convenes the undergraduate games programme, is the main point of contact for students (and prospective students!) and teaches Theory across all our games courses.

Name and Contact Details	Summary
Dr Doug Brown Role: Lecturer – Games Theory, Course Leader - Undergraduate Games Programmes, Admissions Tutor – Games Design Phone: 01895 267913 Email: douglas.brown@brunel.ac.uk Office: Gaskell Building 107 (Ludo Office)	Doug lectures in digital games theory and runs the School of Arts undergraduate games programmes. He has a BA (Hons) Degree in English from Oxford University (St Edmund Hall), an MA in Games Theory and Design and a PhD in Games Theory, both from Brunel. He has recently completed, and is now seeking to publish research into how the suspension of disbelief works in videogames. A lifelong gamer, Doug has also worked in the games industry for Square-Enix / Eidos, credited on several titles. He chose to enter into academic research on games rather than continue a career in the industry because writing about games and trying to understand them more deeply had been a lifelong goal and interest. Doug has had articles published in journals and written chapters of edited collections, often collaborating with Prof. Tanya Krzywinska since their research interests align. These interests include games and narrative, MMO and Online gaming structures and games' place as an exciting new artistic medium. All of this hinges around a passion for gaming as a new textual form, and its potential to work with the human imagination. Doug’s career development has matched games’ generally breaking out into the mainstream while simultaneously starting to be taken seriously as a media form by critics and academics. It is Doug’s desire to help this continue and take root, by showing students the importance of understanding games’ unique features and possibilities within the context of other media. Unlocking the storytelling potential of games as a medium is something he hopes his own research and the work of his students both in academia and the games industry will achieve in the future. He is always happy to field any questions or requests from current or potential students.
Professor Tanya Krzywinska Role: Chair in Screen Studies Phone: 01895 266578 Email: tanya.krzywinska@brunel.ac.uk Office: Gaskell Building 107 (Ludo Office)	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 their formal properties, graphical styles and ‘world creation'. She has, however, maintained her enthusiasm for the gothic and horror generally across various media. Tanya divides her time between Cornwall, where she lives in a Gothic monstrosity with bats in the belfry, and Brunel. She is also an author-illustrator and is currently working on a graphical novel.
Mr Justin Parsler Role: Lecturer, Games Design Phone: Email: justin.parsler@brunel.ac.uk Office: Gaskell Building 107 (Ludo Office)	Justin Parsler is a lecturer in game design and has earned a living designing and running games since he was sixteen, with a three year break from that two (nearly three) decade spree to take a Humanities Degree at Greenwich University. He completed a Masters Degree in Digital Games at Brunel the first year the programme was run and has been teaching the design portion of the course ever since. As well as lecturing, Justin presently works part time as a consulting designer for Mediatonic, one of our industry partners working on a large variety of games. Justin is currently undertaking a PhD at Brunel, in which he is assembling a taxonomy of agency (something he will talk about at length to anyone who does not run fast enough). In a comparatively fast time he has been published in various academic journals writing about a variety of topics. Justin has a great deal of experience, both as designer and player, of almost every type of game there is and has very eclectic tastes - as long as it is a game.

Name and Contact Details

Summary

Dr Doug Brown
Role: Lecturer – Games Theory, Course Leader - Undergraduate Games Programmes, Admissions Tutor – Games Design

Phone: 01895 267913
Email: douglas.brown@brunel.ac.uk
Office: Gaskell Building 107 (Ludo Office)

Doug lectures in digital games theory and runs the School of Arts undergraduate games programmes. He has a BA (Hons) Degree in English from Oxford University (St Edmund Hall), an MA in Games Theory and Design and a PhD in Games Theory, both from Brunel. He has recently completed, and is now seeking to publish research into how the suspension of disbelief works in videogames.

A lifelong gamer, Doug has also worked in the games industry for Square-Enix / Eidos, credited on several titles. He chose to enter into academic research on games rather than continue a career in the industry because writing about games and trying to understand them more deeply had been a lifelong goal and interest.

Doug has had articles published in journals and written chapters of edited collections, often collaborating with Prof. Tanya Krzywinska since their research interests align. These interests include games and narrative, MMO and Online gaming structures and games' place as an exciting new artistic medium. All of this hinges around a passion for gaming as a new textual form, and its potential to work with the human imagination. Doug’s career development has matched games’ generally breaking out into the mainstream while simultaneously starting to be taken seriously as a media form by critics and academics. It is Doug’s desire to help this continue and take root, by showing students the importance of understanding games’ unique features and possibilities within the context of other media. Unlocking the storytelling potential of games as a medium is something he hopes his own research and the work of his students both in academia and the games industry will achieve in the future. He is always happy to field any questions or requests from current or potential students.

Professor Tanya Krzywinska
Role: Chair in Screen Studies

Phone: 01895 266578
Email: tanya.krzywinska@brunel.ac.uk
Office: Gaskell Building 107 (Ludo Office)

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 their formal properties, graphical styles and ‘world creation'. She has, however, maintained her enthusiasm for the gothic and horror generally across various media. Tanya divides her time between Cornwall, where she lives in a Gothic monstrosity with bats in the belfry, and Brunel. She is also an author-illustrator and is currently working on a graphical novel.

Mr Justin Parsler
Role: Lecturer, Games Design

Phone:
Email: justin.parsler@brunel.ac.uk
Office: Gaskell Building 107 (Ludo Office)

Justin Parsler is a lecturer in game design and has earned a living designing and running games since he was sixteen, with a three year break from that two (nearly three) decade spree to take a Humanities Degree at Greenwich University. He completed a Masters Degree in Digital Games at Brunel the first year the programme was run and has been teaching the design portion of the course ever since.

As well as lecturing, Justin presently works part time as a consulting designer for Mediatonic, one of our industry partners working on a large variety of games.

Justin is currently undertaking a PhD at Brunel, in which he is assembling a taxonomy of agency (something he will talk about at length to anyone who does not run fast enough). In a comparatively fast time he has been published in various academic journals writing about a variety of topics.

Justin has a great deal of experience, both as designer and player, of almost every type of game there is and has very eclectic tastes - as long as it is a game.