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“Elena Bertozzi is Chair of Visual and Performing Arts and Director & Professor of Game Design & Development at Quinnipiac University. Her work focuses on using play to communicate information, often about sensitive topics, that empowers players to make informed decisions about their health and well-being. Her current work includes a collaboration with the University of Liberia on public health training initiatives, and a game-based app to address vaccine hesitancy.

As a professor, Elena has developed numerous courses in the evolving field of game design. In addition to practical coding and design courses, she seeks to provide a foundational understanding of games that is grounded in theory and in a historical understanding of the importance of play in the development of culture. Students are encouraged to engage critically with texts and play experiences and produce analytical writing and games that demonstrate their developing expertise. This analysis specifically includes thinking about the way that play can establish and reinforce power structures that exclude historically marginalized groups. The playground also provides a fertile environment for pushing back against these structures and experimenting with ways they can be opposed and dismantled.

As a game designer and developer and the co-founder of SolitonZ Games, she works with teams of physicians, scientists, artists, and programmers to make games that help people help themselves. These games often intersect with research interests in the areas of gender, technology, and sexuality.”