About

After spending much of my life playing videogames and working on and off in videogames as a technical writer and corporate communications specialist, I was able to parlay my fondness for the medium and for the people I'd met through the medium into a tangile way to give help improve the industry. I devote most of my non-teaching & research time to scholarly activism in the form of studying and helping facilitate unionization, collective action, and more ethical workplace practices in game development.

Throughout my time in higher education, I have been lucky enough to work with US, UK, and French videogame production and media production collective action bodies, and I hope to be able to continue that work.

Research interests

My research interests revolve around labour issues in video game production. I have written and presented extensively about crunch, passion-baiting, and unionization. 

Additionally, my work has examined citational politics in media studies, critical making as direct interventionism & praxis, and digital storytelling for LGBTQ+ communities through low barrier-to-entry game design softwares like Twine.

Membership of professional bodies

• Member, Dames Making Games (DMG)
• Member, Society of Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS)
• Member, Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA)
• Member, Popular Culture Association (PCA)
• Member, International Game Developer Association (IGDA)

Qualifications

• BA Technical Communication (summa cum laude) - University of North Texas
• BA Creative Writing, Poetics (summa cum laude) - University of North Texas
• MA New Media Studies (summa cum laude) - DePaul University
• PhD Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media - North Carolina State University
  Dissertation: Passion Traps: Cruel Optimism in Videogame Production

Recent conferences

Jackson, Joshua. “A Saga of Your Very Own: Digital storytelling with Twine.” Realizing Resistance Episode II: Uncharted Galaxies. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL. May 7, 2021. Workshop event

Jackson, Joshua. “Autopoiesis and Subjectivation: A Reflection on Past Work, Schizorevolutionay Interventions for the Future.” Innovation and Knowledge Exchange, Staffordshire University, Stoke-on-Trent, UK. January 20, 2021

Jackson, Joshua. “'Seeing' Videogame Production: Institutional Awareness, feminist objectivity, and embodied experience as methodology.” Media Industry Studies 2020. King’s College London. London, UK. April 17, 2020. Accepted Conference presentation

Jackson, Joshua. “’Can I Be In the Union?’: Videogame Production and the Case for a Proper Vocabulary of Union-eligible Bodies.” Popular Culture Association. Denver, CO. April 15, 2020. Accepted Conference presentation

Jackson, Joshua. “Toward the Erasure of Erasure: Updates and Ongoing Work.” ReFiG. OCAD University. Toronto, Ontario, Canada. November 8, 2019. Conference presentation

International experience

Industry:
1 year at Guidehouse INC in Tysons, Virginia as a Sr. Consultant in Cybersecurity Training. During this project, I led day-to-day operations around developing cybersecurity training material specific to timely, relevant threats to sectors of the public US government. This project was done in conjunction with the US Department of Defense (DoD) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

1 year at Rush University in Chicago, Illinois as an Instructional Designer. I facilitated an overhaul of an existing management andragogy program and created a streamlined 7-class experience that introduces managers to concepts like Emotional Intelligence, DiSC Styles, Cultural Competencies, Navigating Change, and Effective Leadership Communication Strategies.

Academic:
4 years of teaching and research experience at North Carolina State University:
Communication 427: Game Studies
English 331: Communication for Engineering and Technology
Communication 398: Multimedia Production and Digital Culture
Interdisciplinary Studies 201: Environmental Ethics

1 year of teaching at Rush University:
HSM 606: Health Care Organization and The Patient Experience
HSM 608: Human Resources Management

Recent publications

Jackson, Joshua. “The Capitalist Socius and Videogame Production: Autopoietic Subjectivation Monsters.” Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, no. 36, 2020

Jackson, Joshua. “Passion Traps.” Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures, no. 22, 2020

Jackson, Joshua. “The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions: on technology, game-based learning, and erasure.” Hybrid Pedagogy, 2020

Jackson, Joshua. “Videogame Production How the Capitalist Socius and Platformization Subjective.” Loading…, vol. 12, no. 19, 2019