Photo of Dr Paolo Ruffino

Dr Paolo Ruffino

Senior Lecturer Communication and Media

About

Personal Statement

I work as Senior Lecturer in Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool, where I teach and research on videogames, interactive media and digital cultures. My research is concerned with how power and control are negotiated and challenged through digital games by players, producers and theorists. I am currently investigating new forms of independent production of videogames, labour unions in the videogame industry, and nonhuman and posthuman play in the digital age. Previously, I have been working at the University of York, University of Lincoln, London South Bank University and the Centre for Digital Cultures at Leuphana University. I have been awarded a PhD in Media and Communications at Goldsmiths in 2015.

I am the author of Future Gaming: Creative Interventions in Video Game Culture (MIT/Goldsmiths Press 2018), and editor of Independent Videogames: Cultures, Networks, Technics and Politics (Routledge 2021). I have co-curated the volume Rethinking Gamification (Meson Press 2013) and co-edited journal issues of Convergence, Games and Culture, GAME The Italian Journal of Game Studies.

I am also one of four founding members of the artist group IOCOSE. The collective investigates how the narratives surrounding the future of society and technology leave traces on the present. The group works with visual media, mostly video installations and prints. Founded in 2006, IOCOSE have been exhibiting at major artistic and cultural institutions such as Tate Modern (2011), Photographers Gallery (2018, 2016), FACT (2012), Transmediale (2013, 2015), MAMbo (2018), FMAV (2022); Fotomuseum Winterthur (2017) Science Gallery (2012), Jeu de Paume (2011).

Main areas of teaching and PhD supervision:
Semiotics, cultural studies, media studies
Game studies and videogame culture
Independent videogame development
Gender and inclusivity in videogame culture and industry
Gamification and Quantified Self
Posthumanism, the nonhuman, the Anthropocene