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< Back - Meet me @ Develop:Brighton 2026 - Toby Best Queen Mary University of London iGGi PG Researcher Available for post-PhD position Toby has always held video games as an integral part of his livelihood, ever since catching his first Pokémon on the Game Boy Color. The ever-developing evolution of technology, from the humble NES and R.O.B. preventing the video game market crash in 1983, to the Wii’s motion controls, to augmented and virtual reality today, has been a key inspiration, and one of the reasons why he studied Mathematical Computation at University College London. He also has a keen interest in tabletop roleplaying games, such as Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder. His research interests involve the potential of combining roleplaying games' collective storytelling and interactive narrative with the power of artificial intelligence and deep learning. A description of Toby's research: Artificial Intelligence is the field of creating digital agents capable of decision-making and rational thought to fulfil a core goal or aspect. For tabletop and video games, an implemented AI would attempt to ‘solve’ the game by finding optimal winning strategies. However, tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) are driven by the power of collective storytelling and interactive narrative, as opposed to set rules, and therefore have a more open-ended goal - maximising player enjoyment for all participants. This involves a Game Master (GM) player as both narrator and referee, controlling the non-playable characters (NPCs) and the campaign behind the screen, whereas players usually control one player character (PC) each to interact with the world. There is no ‘failure’ state compared to traditional games, as campaigns can continue until players lose interest or the narrative is ‘complete’; even all PCs dying (known as a total party kill) can drive the narrative in a new direction. This project aims to study and piece together the different elements that would go into a Game Master AI, building on current state-of-the-art game-playing AI, such as Director AIs in games such as Valve’s ‘Left 4 Dead’, and studying the implications of such developments for players and game designers alike. For example, whether it could replicate the playing experiences of a human GM as a replacement, or enhance the experience by working with a human GM. Email t.j.best@qmul.ac.uk Website LinkedIn Mastodon BlueSky GitHub Other Link Supervisors: Dr Alena Denisova Dr Raluca Gaina Prof. Simon Lucas Featured Publication(s): "Journeys in the Dark"-Towards Game Master AI in Complex Board Games Why Choose You?-Exploring Attitudes Towards Starter Pokémon Themes Design & Development Game AI Player Research https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYRhQ-w5yPA Previous Next

< Back Dr Laurissa Tokarchuk Queen Mary University of London iGGi Research Collaboration Coordinator Supervisor Laurissa Tokarchuk is a senior lecturer and researcher working on playful ways of exploring and integrating virtual and real world space. Her primary focus is looking at engaging ways of creating and interacting with AR content in games and incorporating physical sensors for increasing playability in mobile games. Her interests also include merging AI with mobile and social sensing to detect events and behaviours in crowds and games, and the use of technology to promote learning/well-being. Her research has resulted in the widely used SensingKit framework, best poster awards, media appearances in the Guardian and BBC (Royal Institution Christmas Lectures). She is particularly interested in supervising students on the following topics: AR/VR games for learning and cognition design for promoting behaviour change understanding and designing for player behaviour and curiosity in games Research themes: Game AI Games with a Purpose Computational Creativity Player Experience Email laurissa.tokarchuk@qmul.ac.uk Website LinkedIn Mastodon BlueSky GitHub Other Link Themes Applied Games Creative Computing Game AI Immersive Technology Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Claudio Guarnera University of York Supervisor You can get more out of your site elements by making them dynamic. To connect this element to content from your collection, select the element and click Connect to Data. Once connected, you can update it anytime without affecting your design or updating elements by hand. Add any type of content to your collection, such as rich text, images, videos and more, or upload it via CSV file. You can also collect and store information from your site visitors using input elements like custom forms and fields. Be sure to click Sync after making changes in a collection, so visitors can see your newest content on your live site. Email claudio.guarnera@york.ac.uk Website LinkedIn Mastodon BlueSky GitHub Other Link Themes Applied Games Creative Computing - Previous Next

< Back Dr Abi Evans University of York Supervisor Abi Evans is a Lecturer in Interactive Media in the Department of Theatre, Film, Television, and Interactive Media at the University of York. Her research is at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Learning Sciences, exploring how technology can provide real-time adaptive scaffolding for the skills and processes associated with effective learning in a variety of settings. Abi is particularly interested in supervising students who want to create and evaluate games and immersive experiences for learning or develop approaches for measuring learning in games. Her current project focuses on developing experiences for people who are learning to code, specifically tackling barriers to learning such as imposter syndrome and misconceptions about coding concepts. Abi would also welcome students interested in games for learning in other disciplines and in informal settings as well as traditional academic disciplines. Email abi.evans@york.ac.uk Website LinkedIn Mastodon BlueSky GitHub Other Link Themes Design & Development Immersive Technology Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Tara Collingwoode-Williams Goldsmiths iGGi Alum Tara is an IGGI PhD student from Goldsmiths University taking her Mphil/PhD in Intelligent Games/Game intelligence with a focus on Avatar Embodiment and Interaction within Virtual Reality. Before this she graduated with a Bsc in Creative Computing. Over the years, her interdisciplinary profile has enabled her to work as a Technical Support and Researcher with many organisations in relation to her research, such as UCL, Great Ormond Street Hospital, George Mason Serious Games Institute in the United States where she also co-lectured a XR Games Module and, more recently as an Associate Lecturer in Goldsmiths University teaching Unity based XR experience development. Currently, she is contracting for USTech as an Assistant UX researcher at Facebook whilst completing her PhD program. With this rise in demand for Head Mounted Displays (HMDs), so is the need to create Embodied Shared Virtual Environments (ESVE) where users may experience authentic social interactions. Tara’s research presents an exploratory examination of Embodiment - meaning the subjective feeling of owning a virtual representation in VR, and specifically Consistency in Embodiment - relating to how we prioritize and syncronise objective attributes of embodiment (i.e avatar representation) in order to create ESVEs which supports more intuitive social interaction. The goal is to understand how different technical setups could have a psychological impact on participants' experiences in ESVE. This research hopes to inform development of successful social interaction in a variety of applications in VR, ranging from training to gaming. Tara presently holds a position as Lekturer in VR at Goldsmiths, Universtiy of London. Email tc.williams@gold.ac.uk Website LinkedIn Mastodon BlueSky GitHub Other Link Featured Publication(s): The Psychological Impact of the Configuration of Self-Representation in Immersive Virtual Reality Delivering Bad News: VR Embodiment of Self Evaluation in Medical Communication Training The impact of self-representation and consistency in collaborative virtual environments G487 (P) Is clinician gaze and body language associated with their ability to identify safeguarding cues? Evaluating virtual reality experiences through participant choices A discussion of the use of virtual reality for training healthcare practitioners to recognize child protection issues A study of professional awareness using immersive virtual reality: the responses of general practitioners to child safeguarding concerns The effect of lip and arm synchronization on embodiment: a pilot study Themes Applied Games Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Cristina Dobre Goldsmiths iGGi Alum Cristina Dobre has a background in Mathematics and Computing receiving distinction in her undergraduate degree in Computer Science. My current focus is on the nonverbal cues that influence and shape the social interaction in immersive VR environments. More broadly, I'm investigating autonomous agents (or virtual humans) in social settings in terms of non-verbal interactions with users. I'm interested in the underlying mechanics of social interaction that help developing an emphatic and engaging virtual human. At the moment, I'm working on ML models based on multimodal datasets to detect various social cues (such as gaze) or various human-defined social attitudes (such as engagement) in social interactions in VR. I'm also interested in generating more complex behaviour for virtual characters (NPCs) that will improve the user's experience with the NPCs in a social VR setting. Designing communication and other social interactions in immersive VR can be a challenging task, and aspects on this are addressed in my research. The findings from these studies can help game designers and game developers determine the appropriate non-player character's non-verbal (and verbal) behaviour in games, especially in VR games. Along with its applications in the games industry, the findings would be useful for other applications such as designing multi-modal human-machine interactions and other systems for medical purposes, for social anxiety disorders therapy, simulations, training or learning. Email cristina.dobre@uni-a.de Website LinkedIn Mastodon BlueSky GitHub Other Link Featured Publication(s): Avatars in mixed-reality meetings: A longitudinal field study of realistic versus cartoon facial likeness effects on communication, task satisfaction, presence, and emotional… Gaze for Dyads & Blinks for Triads: Task Engagement Predictors in Free-Flow VR Interactions Live Link's Awakening of a Humorous Real-Time Character Multimodal Generation of Contextualized Jokes for a Real-Time Virtual Character Social Interactions in Immersive Virtual Environments: People, Agents, and Avatars Rolling Horizon Co-evolution in Two-player General Video Game Playing Using machine learning to generate engaging behaviours in immersive virtual environments More than buttons on controllers: engaging social interactions in narrative VR games through social attitudes detection Nice is Different than Good: Longitudinal Communicative Effects of Realistic and Cartoon Avatars in Real Mixed Reality Work Meetings Immersive Machine Learning for Social Attitude Detection in Virtual Reality Narrative Games Direct Gaze Triggers Higher Frequency of Gaze Change: An Automatic Analysis of Dyads in Unstructured Conversation Themes Game AI Immersive Technology - Previous Next

< Back Prakriti Nayak Queen Mary University of London iGGi PG Researcher Available for placement Prakriti is a neuroscientist passionate about pushing boundaries at the intersection of technology and biological research. Her journey began with a deep dive into neuroscience during her master’s program, where she explored large-scale imaging data and mastered statistical modelling techniques. Afterward, she pursued a career in scientific editing. She views gaming as an excellent platform to connect different fields, such as computational modelling and behaviour. Prakriti plans to develop a model of player uncertainty to enhance the gaming experience by setting difficulty levels that are enjoyable for each player, making games more accessible for people with limited cognitive capabilities. Additionally, her work has diagnostic applications. A description of Prakriti's research: Navigation and spatial memory are essential cognitive processes that enable individuals to orient themselves in complex environments. Amid the inherent uncertainty of environmental noise and cognitive variability, the brain employs sophisticated strategies to make navigational decisions. This project aims to elucidate the cognitive underpinnings of spatial navigation performance by leveraging gaming data to understand how individuals manage spatial uncertainty. The plan is to adapt a Bayesian ideal-observer model based on visual simultaneous localization and mapping. The model will fit and predict the player’s moment-by-moment movement decisions, given the first-person view and the map of the game environment. Fitting the model to the players' gameplay trajectories will yield parameters indicating each individual's levels of visual, motor, and memory noise. The combination of parameters that best differentiate between players will then be examined. This research has the potential to enhance our understanding of spatial navigation and its underlying mechanisms, as well as improve spatial navigation in games, offering an adaptive gaming experience tailored to individual spatial uncertainty levels. Email p.nayak@qmul.ac.uk Website LinkedIn Mastodon BlueSky GitHub Other Link Supervisors: Dr Guifen Chen Dr Yul HR Kang Themes Accessibility Applied Games Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Prof. Paul Cairns University of York iGGi Chair Supervisor Paul Cairns is a professor interested in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) generally and specifically on how games work to produce the experiences that players really value. He has looked extensively at immersion and engagement in games but is also developing new ideas on players experiences of challenge and uncertainty. He has been teaching HCI for over twenty years and is particularly interested in the rigorous application of research methods having co-edited the first book on research methods for HCI and written another about doing better statistics in HCI. He strongly believes in self-explanatory book titles. He is also Scholar-in-Residence at The AbleGamers Charity, based in the USA, through which he is working with players and game developers to inform and advance the development of accessible games. With his colleagues there, he produced the Accessible Player Experiences (APX) design patterns and card deck. He is particularly interested in supervising students with a HCI, behavioural sciences, media or computer science background on the following topics: Understanding player experiences Developing new measures of player experience whether based on self-report, physiological or other instruments Accessible player experiences Using games to understand and inform people’s experiences with other interactive systems Research themes: Accessible Games Games with a Purpose Player Experience Email paul.cairns@york.ac.uk Website LinkedIn Mastodon BlueSky GitHub Other Link Themes Accessibility Applied Games Game Data Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Nicole Levermore University of York Alumni Liaison Nicole, who is currently also an iGGi PhD Researcher (see her PGR profile here ), was hired by iGGi in December 2025 as an additional Administrative Assistant. The role's key aim is to grow and support the iGGi Alumni Network, where past iGGi Students can keep up to date with what each other is doing, stay in contact, collaborate etc. If you are an iGGi Alum and want to be a part of an iGGi Alumni Network, Nicole would love to hear from you. Over the forthcoming months, she will reach out to those who have expressed interest or who will probably be interested, and she will share details about the envisaged concept. Please feel free to contact Nicole about anything iGGi Alumni Network related, as suggestions are always welcome! Email nicole.levermore@york.ac.uk Website LinkedIn Mastodon BlueSky GitHub Other Link Themes Accessibility Design & Development Immersive Technology Player Research Previous Next

< Back Dr Jozef Kulik University of York iGGi Alum Jozef’s first study has focused on developing a better understanding of the challenges and barriers to making accessible games. This identified a vast array of personal, organisational, and external factors which contribute to the difficulties that developers experience when seeking to make their games more accessible, and also identifies avenues which might be helpful. One key finding in this research was that one of the biggest challenges that developers experience relates to a lack of lived experience with disability, or knowledge of the player experience with disabilities. My most recent research is focused on how to effectively extract that knowledge from players with disabilities, then insert it into a large studio within the UK. This research takes a multi-pronged approach to assisting developers in making more accessible games. First by directly assisting a studio with knowledge about their games, second generating potentially transferable knowledge on accessibility issues and player experience for the rest of the industry, and exploring how research methods such as diary study methodology can be valuable in extracting data from natural play environments with people with disabilities. Email joe.kulik@york.ac.uk Website LinkedIn Mastodon BlueSky GitHub Other Link Supervisors: Prof. Paul Cairns Dr Jen Beeston Featured Publication(s): Understanding how we make accessible games: Perspectives from the games industry and players with disabilities A Qualitative Investigation of Real World Accessible Design Experiences within a Large Scale Commercial Game Development Studio Grounded theory of accessible game development What makes icons appealing? The role of processing fluency in predicting icon appeal in different task contexts Themes Accessibility Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Michelangelo Conserva Queen Mary University of London iGGi Alum Michelangelo Conserva is a second year PhD researcher studying principled exploration strategies in reinforcement learning. He is particularly interested in randomized exploration and, more generally, Bayesian methods for reinforcement learning. He holds a BSc in Statistics, Economics and Finance from Sapienza, University of Rome and an MSc in Computational Statistics and Machine learning from University College of London. A description of Michelangelo's research: As a PhD student at Queen Mary University of London, Michelangelo aims to leverage Bayesian models to develop principled algorithms for reinforcement learning in the context of function approximations. The main challenge lies in finding a balance between computational costs and optimality. Evaluating such balance requires careful evaluation, which is currently lacking in reinforcement learning. Email m.conserva@qmul.ac.uk Website LinkedIn Mastodon BlueSky GitHub Other Link Supervisors: Prof. Simon Lucas Dr Paulo Rauber Featured Publication(s): Exploration with Foundation Models: Capabilities, Limitations, and Hybrid Approaches ForestCast: Forecasting Deforestation Risk at Scale with Deep Learning Foundation Models as World Models: A Foundational Study in Text-Based GridWorlds Heterogeneous graph neural networks for species distribution modeling Mapping Farmed Landscapes from Remote Sensing On the Limits of Tabular Hardness Metrics for Deep RL: A Study with the Pharos Benchmark What are you looking at? Team fight prediction through player camera Posterior Sampling for Deep Reinforcement Learning Hardness in Markov Decision Processes: Theory and Practice Recurrent Neural-Linear Posterior Sampling for Nonstationary Contextual Bandits The Graph Cut Kernel for Ranked Data Themes Game AI - Previous Next

< Back - Meet me @ Develop:Brighton 2026 - Luiza Gossian Queen Mary University of London iGGi PG Researcher Available for placement Luiza is a multidisciplinary researcher, game designer and developer interested in translating real world concepts into engaging game mechanics. Her work explores how games can bridge the gap between serious and entertainment design, combining the strengths of both to tackle difficult topics in new and unexpected ways. As an experienced artist, graphic designer and photographer, Luiza uses her visual skills and psychology background to prototype experimental game designs, design game documentation and craft atmospheric experiences. A description of Luiza's research: Luiza’s work explores alternative approaches to serious games that blend the accessibility and engagement of casual game design with the applied foundations of research-driven game development. Using her project Detachment Undone, an abstract arcade game inspired by the ten stages of genocide, she is investigating how to design games about genocide that break away from traditional, narrative-centric approaches and embrace the ludic potential of games. Drawing on theories of intergroup and cultural psychology, she is exploring how these difficult themes can be expressed through mechanics in engaging, effective and informative ways. Email l.gossian@outlook.com Website LinkedIn Mastodon BlueSky GitHub Other Link Supervisors: Dr Jo Iacovides Dr Jeremy Gow Themes Applied Games Design & Development - Previous Next