I am a writer, researcher, and digital artist, creating interactive media based on social and historical research. I like to cross disciplinary boundaries, such as making live theatre with game-like interaction, or videogames for gallery spaces. I recently completed a PhD by practice in Sociology at Lancaster University, submitting original videogames alongside a traditional dissertation. My work has been shown around the world, including Tokyo, Berlin, Chicago, Vancouver, and London.

My career began as a writer and editor, running the games business site Gamesbrief and my own independent publication Memory Insufficient. As part of these roles, I quickly developed skills in web design, content management, and Adobe suite publishing tools. In late 2015 I took the position of Senior Curator at Critical Distance, taking a leading role in redesigning the website, building new archiving and search features, as well as reviewing 200-300 submissions of articles per week for consideration in our weekly roundups.

In 2017 I benefitted from Eden Film Productions’ Transforming Cinema project, which provided training in filmmaking to a cohort of LGBTQ+ creatives. I wrote and presented Skeleton in a Beret, a short film about transgender people getting to know themselves via their video game avatars. It was screened at festivals internationally, including BFI Flare in London and SQIFF in Glasgow. The next year, I created a series of short documentary films about people who collect and curate games, while travelling down the West Coast of Canada and the United States. My short film “Vanishing Point”, which ruminates on single point perspective in art history, was selected for Sight and Sound Magazine’s top video essays of the year.

Meanwhile, I was also developing a practice of creating my own independent games. I carried out a residency in Tokyo interviewing transgender people and turning the material into Tamagotchi-like characters. To tour festivals and gallery shows, I installed these works in handmade handheld consoles with accompanying cushions. I further developed this method in the 2019-2020 Freelands Residency with Site Gallery Sheffield, by developing Cis Penance, a large project based on 45 interviews with trans people in the UK. Last year I received a DYCP grant to research accessible design for games and the web, helping me to concretely centre multiply marginalised perspectives.

Since 2021 I have been developing a practice in interactive theatre. With the support of the New Conversations programme (British Council, Canadian Council for the Arts), I developed new interactive theatre methods in collaboration with Canadian videogame artist Dietrich Squinkifer, building a tool to allow the audience to cast votes determining what the performers will do. In 2022 I participated in the Bank Cohort programme with Sheffield Theatres, and assisted Sheffield Theatres Young Company as a games consultant to create interactive play Maybe I Will. Last year, I created Assigned Earth at Birth, the first part of an ambitious project called Intrapology.