Anne Sullivan, who will be joining the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design (AMPD) as an assistant professor in January 2025, has been named a 2024 Higher Education Video Game Alliance (HEVGA) Fellow.
Established in 2017, the HEVGA Fellows Program recognizes senior scholars in the gaming domain for their contributions to the fields of design, theory and research. HEVGA Fellows are elected by their peers based on outstanding contributions to games-based research and design in higher education.
“I'm deeply honored to be named as one of this year's HEVGA fellows,” says Sullivan. “I'm in incredible company with some folks I deeply respect (and often cite). Our students shape the future of gaming, and it's vital that we listen and learn from them for the continued improvement of video game education. Therefore, I'm particularly excited to be joining York University in January and working with York's diverse community of students.”
Sullivan has over a decade of software engineering experience, mainly with Electronic Arts (EA). Her research connects various fields and communities through a humanistic, artistic and technical lens, focusing on critical game design, co-creative AI and human-computer interaction. She examines and creates engaging, narrative-driven and inclusive interactive experiences for education, craft and gaming.
An accomplished author, Sullivan has published over 45 peer-reviewed articles and has conducted design-based research on generative tools for tabletop games, playful storytelling for queer histories, and NSF-funded studies on teaching computational thinking to quilters. Her work, including the loom-controlled game system Loominary, has been featured in international exhibitions, such as at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Beginning in January 2025, Sullivan will be teaching students in the Digital Media program.