Where have I been!? A personal/professional update

Over the past year and a half, I’ve been insanely busy both personally and professionally, which means that I’ve had little time to spare to update this blog. I’ll do my best to condense all the major events into an update of reasonable length…

Summer 2017. Started as the Vice Chair of the Game Studies Division at the International Communication Association conference in San Diego (responsibility, yay!). Gave invited research talks at National Chiao Tung University and National Chengchi University in Taiwan as well as at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Spent time at Stanford in Jeremy Bailenson’s Virtual Human Interaction Laboratory as a visiting scholar — writing a grant proposal and making a great new friend and collaborator, Benjy Li of Nanyang Technological University (we’ve worked on four papers in the past year!).

Fall 2017. Ran my second half-marathon. Helped organize the first VOICES (Virtual Ongoing Interdisciplinary Collaborations on Educating with Song) conference. Taught my first class on hip-hop, which dovetailed nicely with the Voices conference. Had twin babies (born Oct 18)!

Winter 2017. Hibernated. …by which I mean changed 10-15 diapers per day and did 3 feedings per night. Hosted lots of family visits — funny how magnetic these little humans are.

Spring 2018. Attended the ISPR and ICA conferences in Prague. Avoided as many vice-chair failures as possible. Organized the informal dance party party. Served on NSF grant review panel. Attended NSF grants conference in Detroit.

Summer 2018. Celebrated by 10-year wedding anniversary. Got tenure (yay). Began a new research stream on adult/explicit media (because tenure). Hit turbo on paper submissions — churned out ~6 articles, including a meta-analysis of the Proteus Effect, which I hope will help provide evidence that the phenomenon is an important topic of study.

Fall 2018. Completed and released my Coursera course, Avatar Psychology for Designers. Co-chaired the Meaningful Play conference. Served as AC for CHI (games and play; first time). Ran my 3rd and 4th half marathons. Celebrated the twins first birthday! OMG it’s been a year, and what a year it’s been.

TTFN!

R