Assistant Professor Alexander Ross, School of Information
Approaches To Teaching And Research is a workshop Series and forum designed to facilitate collaborative and interdisciplinary approaches to incorporating game-based learning and research. Instead of approaching games and play as entirely new phenomena that need to be inserted into academic work, this project will propose ways to approach them as learning tools and methodologies, inviting faculty and graduate students to share how they are currently engaging with playful approaches to teaching and research. These talks will be structured according to a game-based methodology (i.e. walkthroughs) and will include hands-on engagement with digital games. This project aims to break down disciplinary boundaries and facilitate new creative skills and digital literacies across the university and for the general public.
Awarded a 2025–2026 Catalyzing Engaged Digital Scholarship (CEDS) Grant, co-presented by DiSA and UBC’s Public Humanities Hub, the grant supports collaborative critical inquiry and technological innovation over two years, with recipients building toward Tri-Council funding.
Dr Alexander Ross is a critical communications scholar, with a focus on media theory and the political economy of communication. His research is interdisciplinary and focuses on how communication systems and infrastructures impact the development of new media industries and cultural production. Dr. Ross’s research has mainly focused on digital platforms and the role they have played in expanding the popularity, reach, and influence of highly volatile contingent commodities. The next phase of his research is grounded in broader questions of contingency and ephemerality in media and communication, exploring these issues within a critical Indigenous context.