Sarah Maxey is a leading figure in New Zealand design, much respected in the industry, and studied in universities. She worked for Bloomsbury Publishing in London UK in the mid-’90s, establishing the company’s inaugural art department. For the intervening years she has run her own studio specialising in print design for the arts sector and literary publishers, winning numerous awards for her work. She has exhibited typographic works and installations in public galleries throughout New Zealand.

Dylan Horrocks has worked as a cartoonist, writer and illustrator for over 30 years. His work includes comic books, graphic novels, political cartoons, poem comics, prose fiction, children’s books, and essays. His graphic novel Hicksville has been translated into numerous languages and was named a Book of the Year by The Comics Journal and one of the best graphic novels of all time by Rolling Stone. He has collaborated with novelists, scientists, poets, film-makers and artists. In 2016, he was named an Arts Laureate by the New Zealand Arts Foundation.

hicksvillecomics.com

Zach Dodson is a designer, teacher, and award-winning practitioner of the narrative arts in many forms. He founded featherproof books, which has published over 30 genre-bending books. True to its hybrid nature, his own work takes many forms including illuminated novels, games, television, and academic research. His most recent novel, Bats of the Republic, was published by Doubleday. It won Print magazine’s Best of Design Award, Washington Post Notable Book of the Year, and Design Observer 50 Books of 2015. He is currently working on KUU, a companion book and video game which combines traditional print design and creative writing with new approaches in interactive fiction and visual narrative. A book chapter on his process appears in The Experimental Book Object (Routledge, 2023).

zachdodson.com || interactivetragedy.com

Tonya Sweet is an artist-designer and established design educator with expertise in sustainable design, design ethics and theory, and diverse fabrication practices. Tonya's current research examines the impacts of humanity’s disconnection from nature and the multitude of ways this is experienced collectively and individually. Tonya was granted a Master of Fine Arts degree in Sculpture from the Cranbrook Academy of Art, and a Bachelor of Fine Art in Furniture Design from the Rhode Island School of Design in the United States. Her experience bridges three continents and a wide array of disciplines and making approaches including: architecture and construction, furniture design and fabrication, exhibition design and fabrication, and the design and production of illustrations, paintings, collages, and sculpture.

tonyasweet.com

Hamish Cameron (he/him) is an ancient historian and analogue game designer. His primary design focus is tabletop roleplaying games, creating frameworks for players to explore neon and chrome cyberpunk dystopias (The Sprawl, 2016), friendship and cooperation for all ages (Dinosaur Princesses, 2019), hierarchies of oppression, cannibalism and radical bodily transformation (Kratophagia (2022-) and the kinetic urgency of Paul Greengrass (The David Web, 2022). As well as a variety of historical topics, his research addresses the representation of the ancient world in contemporary analogue and digital games, the role of games in historical teaching, and other game analysis topics. His current design projects bring his historical and ludic worlds together: a board game on Romano-Parthian Mesopotamia and a tabletop roleplaying game in the fertile intersection of ancient Rome and the Lovecraftian Cthulhu Mythos.

Ardens Ludere

Heli Salomaa is a Digital Costume Designer, Lecturer and Researcher specialised in analogue and digital character costumes across various mediums: stage, film, animation, virtual reality and video games. With her professional background in performance costumes, she has dressed physical and digital bodies for 40 productions. She lectures and arranges workshops on digital costume production and design communication at media, fashion, game design and costume departments internationally. Heli's Master’s research (2018, Aalto University) focused on Video Games and Costume Art – digitalising analogue methods of costume design. In this, she advocates for involving costume designers in the game development process, thus adding production value through costume designers’ knowledge of materials, costume construction and deeper level of analysis and interpretation of human nature on a conceptual level. The research received three acknowledgements as a pioneering master’s research 2018. It was issued the Dean’s award and Metex award and selected as one of twelve outstanding master level graduate works at Aalto University showcased in the Game Changers exhibition.

Tanya Ruka (Ngāti Pakau, Ngāpuhi) is a contemporary multimedia artist whose work is held in international and national collections. Over the past 20 years, she has developed a research-based art practice that creates visual narratives deeply rooted in ancestral Mātauranga Māori teachings, honouring Indigenous ways of knowing and being. Tanya has also been invited to serve as a curator and juror for local and international exhibitions and art competitions.

Tuakana Metuarau is a filmmaker, animator, and game developer. He graduated from the School of Design in 2015 with a BDI specializing in Media Design before completing his Masters of Design Innovation in 2017, focusing on the history of video game home consoles and how that data could be stored and catalogued through the video game medium itself. Tuakana's main research interests are film, animation and retro video games or, more specifically, how these mediums through accessible software and hardware tools can be used to tell Māori and Pasifika stories. This is in an effort to represent Māori and Pasifika in the digital space and demonstrate the potential of the various cultures in these spaces. His research also focuses on the history and development of these various mediums in an effort to better understand them when utilising them for creative research outputs.

Simon Ray is an artist and animator who has been producing and directing digital content for over 20 years. Simon has set up successful animation and media studios in Australia and the UK. His work has won numerous awards and he has contributed to exhibitions and film festivals around the world.

Alfio Leotta is an award-winning film-maker, teacher and scholar. Alfio has published on topics such as New Zealand cinema, fantasy cinema and the relationship between film and tourism. He is the author of   'Touring the Screen: Tourism and New Zealand Film Geographies' (Intellect, 2011);  'The Bloomsbury Companion to Peter Jackson' (Bloomsbury, 2016); and 'The Cinema of John Milius' (Rowman & Littlefield/Lexington, 2018). Recently, he also co-edited 'Audiovisual Tourism Promotion' (Palgrave 2022) with Diego Bonelli. Alfio has also produced and directed a number of fantasy and horror short films. He is particularly interested in the relationship between poetry, film and creative technologies. Alfio is the founder and co-director of the Aotearoa Poetry Film Festival.

www.aotearoapff.com

Fanni Fazakas is a Wellington-based XR director, researcher, and Unreal Engine technical artist whose work explores the intersections of immersive storytelling, social justice, and speculative design. She is the creator of Missing 10 Hours VR, a multi-ending non-fiction experience addressing the bystander effect and drug-facilitated assault. The project premiered at IDFA DocLab and went on to receive major international recognition, including Best in Show VR at SIGGRAPH Los Angeles, People’s Choice VR at SIGGRAPH Asia (Sydney), Best Interactive XR at Kaohsiung XR Dreamland Festival, and Best International XR for Impact at DocEdge. With over a decade of experience across animation, game, and immersive media production, Fanni has worked with organisations such as Google, AT&T, WWF, and UNHCR. She is the founder of RUMEXR, an independent XR studio with an international focus, and a Senior Lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington, where she teaches performance capture, real-time animation, and immersive narrative design. Her current research spans kaupapa Māori-aligned housing visualisation, co-design with Gen Z and Millennial communities, and the ethics of embodiment in virtual spaces.

Sydney is a Reader in Book History and The Printer, Wai-te-ata Press. She focuses on the interdisciplinary study of transnational and cross-cultural book history and print culture in the contexts of the history of empire, history of technology, and the history of reading. Technological convergence is an additional platform for research and practice, bringing both historic and contemporary media into creative conversation though explorations into the digital handmade, generative computer art, and typographically-situated augmented reality experiences. Her current research focuses on AI and Translation as well as big cultural data and collaborative kaupapa Māori approaches, all grounded in the theories, methods, and practices of digital humanities, spatial history, and cultural informatics. Sydney is also a practising letterpress printer, exhibiting book artist, and designer bookbinder who undertakes creative research commissions at Wai-te-ata Press

Emily Morris (she/they) is a full-time PhD candidate studying Design within Te Hura Hoahoa—School of Design Innovation at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. She completed her MDI (Master of Design Innovation), awarded with Distinction, in 2022, researching how queer game design elements in TTRPGs (tabletop role-playing games) have the potential to encourage queer identity exploration and play. Her ongoing PhD research is concerned with queer play in TTRPGs, and its potentiality to be both transformative and transcendental. Emily currently works within Te Kura Hoahoa—School of Design Innovation as a tutor and Teaching Fellow, and also works as a freelance graphic designer for global clients such as IFLA (International Federation of Landscape Architects) and ResearchRabbit. She has experience as a teaching fellow and has taught both graphic design and illustration to undergraduate students, as well as tutored a wide variety of courses from 100-400 level involving all areas of design, writing, and research. She is passionate about research areas such as queer theory, feminist studies, identity, game design, design research, transformative works, fan studies, and visual narratives.

queerttrpgstudies.com || ejbmorris.com