Presenters

Sav is a first year PhD student in Classics at the University of Glasgow, studying the ways in which the ancient world is mediated through video games. She has a BA in Classical Archaeology and Ancient History and an MSc. in Archaeology from the University of Oxford. Outside of work she runs Musketeer Productions, a theatre company that specialises in staging new writing across the UK.

Ahmed Alameen is an award winning game developer/writer. He creates stories inspired by Mesopotamia and the MENA region, and his debut game - My Father Lied- was nominated at many events, and won best Arab Game developed at The Grand Game Awards 2025. 

Alexander Vandewalle is a postdoctoral researcher who specializes in the reception of antiquity, history, and mythology in video games. For his PhD thesis (2024), he investigated the characterization of Greek mythological figures in games. He has previously published or presented on various aspects of classical reception in games (e.g., aesthetics, intertextuality, pedagogy, epigraphy, haptics), characterization, player experiences, game development, game analysis methodology, and wider pop-cultural franchises (e.g., Star Wars, the Marvel Cinematic Universe). He is also the founder of Paizomen, a work-in-progress database of games set in ancient Greece and Rome), and the author of Characters and Characterization in Mythological Video Games (2026, Bloomsbury Academic).

Meghan Sullivan is the founder of History N' Games, an educational video and audio podcast that helps video game fans discover and explore the real history hidden inside their favorite games. Meghan has been in the games industry for two decades, and loves Mario Kart and Mass Effect equally. She is also a history enthusiast who reads everything from Idiot's Guide to Ancient Greece to Plato's Republic. When not playing games or deep-diving into history facts, Meghan enjoys taking care of her Pekingese Paris and watering her many, many plants. She also loves pizza, anime, and wrestling.

Dr. Kate Minniti is an archaeologist and has been a gamer for more than two decades. Since 2013 she has been exploring how video games can represent and mis-represent both archaeology as a field and antiquity itself. From 2020 she has also been participating in panels and conferences on archaeogaming and reception of antiquity in video games and has been focusing (and publishing – in two languages!) on the topic of the portrayal of Egyptian mummies and ‘monsters’.

Julie Levy (she/they) is an archaeogamer, independent scholar, and activist. She is the Managing Director at the Save Ancient Studies Alliance, an organization devoted to bringing ancient studies into the mainstream. They also run a YouTube channel with historical content and a weekly archaeogaming Twitch stream. Her ancient history specialties are ancient Greek, historical linguistics, and comparative mythology; their gaming interests run to indie games with puzzle and life sim elements.

Dr. Roselyn A. Campbell is a bioarchaeologist and Egyptologist specializing in bioarchaeological and anthropological studies of state-sanctioned violence in the past, as well as evidence for cancer in ancient human remains. She earned her PhD in Archaeology from the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA and is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at Purdue University. She has conducted archaeological fieldwork in Egypt, Jordan, Peru, Armenia, Ethiopia, and Spain, as well as throughout the western United States. Dr. Campbell's most recent research project explores how players learn about gender in the ancient world through the Assassin's Creed video games.

Michael Anthony DeAnda is a games scholar, designer, and educator who considers games as meaning-making systems for people to connect to others, history, culture, and the world around us. Mike is a Senior Professional Lecturer in School of Design at DePaul University, teaching in the Game Design and Human Centered Design programs. 

Kai Hakomori (they/them) is a second year game design MFA at DePaul University. Their research interests include media preservation, queer meaning-making, and communities of practice.

Ziyi Wu is a Game Design MFA student at DePaul University, passionate about narrative-driven games. Her recent work focuses on creating games where players build unique stories through gameplay.

Alexej Hrajnoha (they/it/he) is a Game Design MFA student at Depaul University in Chicago. With a background in Art, Alexej infuses their game concepts with whimsical and artful thinking. In pursuit of their MFA, Alexej explores surrealist and queer themes in their body of work, treating their catalogue of games more like collection of art pieces. 

Bradley Estacio is a Game Design MFA student at DePaul University. His design and research interests are in tabletop games, the shared experiences games bring to the table, and the communities that form around games. 

Colin Snyder is a game designer and artist based in Brooklyn, New York. He is the founder and director of Little Red, an independent game studio and publisher of nonfiction games.

Joel Gordon (Independent/University of Otago) is a socio-cultural historian whose research focuses on the development of eschatological thought in the ancient world. Related to this is his reception studies work which explores how the gods/heroes of antiquity are portrayed in modern mass media.