We are thrilled to welcome Katie Salen to the advisory board of Journalism + Design. Her experience and expertise will accelerate our progress in the development of great journalism in a complex digital environment.
Salen has served as an advisor to J+D on the development of our open-source curriculum, and has been an inspiration for many years incorporating playful experimentation into our work.
During her tenure at Parsons School of Design, Salen founded the MFA in Design and Technology program; she is currently professor of game design and development in the Department of Informatics at the University of California at Irvine, as well as chief designer and co-founder of Connected Camps, an online learning platform powered by youth Minecraft experts. Salen is founding executive director of Institute of Play and has also held tenured faculty positions at University of Texas at Austin and DePaul University.
Salen is co-author of Rules of Play, a textbook on game design, The Game Design Reader, Quest to Learn: Growing a School for Digital Kids, and editor of The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning, all from MIT Press. She was an early advocate of the world of machinima and continues to be interested in connections between game design, learning, and transformative modes of play, having been involved the design of slow games, online games, mobile games, and big games in both the commercial and independent games sectors.
Salen has been a PI on grants from the Gates Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Committee for Children, and Intel. She holds advanced degrees from the University of Texas at Austin and the Rhode Island School of Design.