About The Presenters

Dr. Andrew Reinhard

Andrew Reinhard is the author of Archaeogaming: An Introduction to Archaeology in and of Video Games (Berghahn Books 2018). In 2013 he minted the #archaeogaming portmanteau, hashtag, and Twitter account (now migrated to Mastodon), as well as the blog archaeogaming.com. In 2014, he and a team of archaeologists helped excavate the "Atari Burial Ground" in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Reinhard received his PhD in Archaeology from the University of York (UK) in 2020 with the thesis titled Archaeology of Digital Environments: Tools, Methods, and Approaches, which is available as Open Access. He continues to investigate and publish on the intersection of human communities and digital built environments. Currently the Director of Publications for the American Numismatic Society and Research Affiliate with New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, he is actively looking to return to academia full-time to create a program and center for Digital Heritage and Archaeology at a U.S. college or university.

Dr. Kara Cooney

Kara Cooney is a professor of Egyptology at UCLA and Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. Specializing in social history, gender studies, and economies in the ancient world, she received her Ph.D. in Egyptology from Johns Hopkins University. Her popular books include The Women Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut's Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt, When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt, and The Good Kings: Absolute Power in Ancient Egypt and the Modern World. Her latest books include Recycling for Death: A Social History of Ancient Egypt and the Royal Caches from American University in Cairo Press (forthcoming 2023) and Ancient Egyptian Society: Challenging Assumptions, Exploring Approaches from Routledge (2022).

Betty Robertson

Betty Robertson is an award-winning game writer and narrative designer with experience in AAA, indie, and mobile titles. She loves to deep dive into the culture and history of any given civilization she’s writing for. Currently, she lives in Montreal and supports a number of narrative talks and projects.

Megan Lewis 

Megan Lewis has a B.A. from Birmingham University (UK) in Ancient History, an M.Phil. from the same in Assyriology, and an M.A. in Near Eastern Studies from the Johns Hopkins University. She attained ABD status in a Ph.D. program at The Johns Hopkins University, before deciding that her energies would be better spent elsewhere. She hopes to return to school and obtain her doctorate at a later date. Megan serves on the board of directors for H.A.P.S., and takes care of the day-to-day running of the Digital Hammurabi YouTube channel and Podcast. 

Michael Granado 

Michael Granado is currently a Dean of Students at Sora Schools, and has been a history and philosophy educator for the past decade. Michael is currently completing his PhD in Philosophy at Staffordshire University. 

Alexander Vandewalle

Alexander Vandewalle is a Joint PhD Researcher at the University of Antwerp (Department of Communication Studies) and Ghent University (Department of Literary Studies) in Belgium, where he studies the characterization of Greco-Roman gods and heroes in video games. He holds an MA in Linguistics & Literature: Latin & Greek from Ghent University (2017) and an MSc in Film Studies and Visual Culture from the University of Antwerp (2018). He has previously published and presented on various topics related to game studies broadly (e.g., game analysis methodology, characterization), and games and antiquity more specifically (e.g., mythological characters, intertextuality, epigraphy, haptic feedback, pedagogical applications, and player experiences). He is also the creator of Paizomen (www.paizomen.com), a work-in-progress database of video games set in classical antiquity, and co-hosts weekly game livestreams on Twitch with the Save Ancient Studies Alliance.

Kate Minniti

Kate Minniti just defended her PhD in Classical Archaeology from the Department of Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC. She has a Master’s Degree in Egyptian Archaeology from UCL and one in History of Art and Archaeology from the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU. She has been working as a field archaeologist for more than a decade, and since 2015 she is a senior member of the NYU-UniMi archaeological expedition in Selinunte, Italy. Her main research interests are connectivity and local responses to globalization in the Mediterranean during the Archaic Period. She has also been a gamer for more than two decades, and since 2013 has been exploring how video games can represent - and mis-represent both archaeology as a field and antiquity itself. From 2020 she has been participating in a growing number of panels and conferences on archaeogaming and reception of antiquity in video games as a member of the Archaeogaming Collective, and has been streaming weekly on Twitch as Archaeogaming Live Events Coordinator for the Save Ancient Studies Alliance.

Cecelia Chisdock, Keri Porter, & David Grogan

Cecelia Chisdock, Keri Porter, and David Grogan are three Ph.D. students at the University of Notre Dame with diverse archaeological specialties and a shared interest in archaeogaming. They are particularly interested in how the processes players engage in in-game can be used to understand how similar processes may have occured in the ancient past and the decisions behind such.

Lexie Henning 

Lexie earned her BA in Classics from the University of Missouri (Mizzou) in 2018. Prior to co-founding The Ozymandias Project, she worked on political campaigns, interned on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C., and worked for the Illinois State Senate. Her scholarly interests are in exploring Classical reception through the lens of contemporary storytelling in media, advocating for open access to the ancient world, and making ancient studies applicable in the modern world. In January 2023, she completed an MSc in Southeast European Studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, writing her thesis on the effects of Islamic iconoclasm on the Hagia Sophia and its impact on cultural heritage policy in Erdoğan’s Turkey. She now serves as the programs & administration coordinator for UCLA’s Pourdavoud Center for the Study of the Iranian World. In her free time, she enjoys playing tennis, reading, horse-riding, learning foreign languages, traveling the world, and studying transportation/infrastructure issues.

Princess O'Nika Auguste

Princess O'Nika Auguste is a Saint Lucian ancient historian, biblical scholar and theologian, who writes on gender, violence, religion, and  ancient history. Princess’s work is featured in PopCulture and Theology, Christian Feminism Today, LAPP Brand Magazine, and Intersect Antigua. She is a frequent contributor to the Popular Culture Dialogue Series. Follow her on Instagram, or Twitter via @isletheologian