SPEAKERS
Judi Alston + Andy Campbell
Creator Talk
Thursday 2 April, 2 - 3pm
Peter/McKenna Rooms, CUC
Judi Alston is a producer, writer, and creative director and founder/CEO of One to One Development Trust and co-director of Dreaming Methods. Her practice centers on place, working-class narratives, and community legacy.
Andy Campbell is the founder of Dreaming Methods, widely recognised as a pioneer of digital fiction whose work spans interactive narrative, XR, and spatial installation over nearly three decades.
Their recent project, Revealed: Triptych, tells the story of the 1984/85 UK Miners' Strike across three distinct XR platforms.
Amy Glazer
Lightning Talk
Thursday 2 April, 11am–12pm, Peter/McKenna Rooms, CUC
Amy Glazer is a first-year Masters student in Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Industry Management Program and a graduate of Arts University Bournemouth, where they studied Animation Production.
Their current research, developed through the AMT Lab, explores how immersive technology can be combined with narrative animation to open new modes of storytelling. They also work as an A/V Technician with CMU's Recording Services team and as Studio Coordinator at School of Rock Wexford.
Afrooz Partovi
creator Talk
Saturday 4 April, 11am–12pm,
Kenner Room
Afrooz Partovi is an artist-architect whose work explores the intangible dimensions of time and space through immersive technologies and time-based media.
A current MFA candidate at Carnegie Mellon University and co-founder of Unche Studio, her practice centres on absence, erasure, and the narratives that persist beyond physical structures.
She is a recipient of a Creative Research Grant from XRTC and a FRFF grant from the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry.
Eric Williams
Lightning Talk
Thursday 2 April, 11am–12pm, Peter/McKenna Rooms, CUC
Eric Williams directs the cine-VR division at Ohio University's GRID Lab, where he has secured over five million dollars in grants for projects in public safety, training, and education.
His background spans film and television writing for AMC, Universal, and Fox Interactive, and his immersive work has earned a Writer's Guild of America Award, a Regional Emmy, and the 2023 FBI National Academy Science and Innovation Award.
Drew Davidson
Keynote
Thursday 2 April, 5–6pm,
Peter/McKenna Rooms, CUC
Drew Davidson is a Teaching Professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center and, by courtesy, the Human-Computer Interaction Institute.
A professor, producer, and player of interactive media, he works across academic, industry, and professional worlds with a focus on stories and transformational experiences.
He is the founding president and editor-in-chief of Play Story Press and the Well Played series and journal.
Arthur Earnest
Lightning Talk
Thursday 2 April, 11am–12pm, Peter/McKenna Rooms, CUC
Arthur Earnest is a media producer and director based in Raleigh, North Carolina. For over a decade he has worked with immersive media to tell stories in educational contexts at North Carolina State University and in independent documentary projects, including Portrait of a Street, a profile series celebrating North Carolina artists.
Mame-Fatou Niang
Talk
Saturday 4 April, 11am–12pm,
Kenner Room, Tepper Building
Mame-Fatou Niang is a Professor of Global French Studies and founder and director of the Center for Black European Studies and the Atlantic at Carnegie Mellon University.
She is the author of Identités Françaises and co-author of Universalisme, and her research examines Black geographies and the institutionalization of Black Studies. She is international curator of the Rio de Janeiro Literary Festival and an artist-in-residence at Ateliers Médicis in Paris.
Kristen Lauth Shaeffer & Andrew Halasz
Talk - The Immersive Experience
Friday 3 April, 12–1pm,
Peter/McKenna Rooms, CUC
Kristen Lauth Shaeffer is Chair of Arts, Design and Communication and an Associate Professor of Media Arts at Chatham University in Pittsburgh. Her work ranges from hand-drawn participatory animation to 360 video documentary and has screened at the New Orleans Film Festival and the Vancouver International Film Festival.
Andrew Halasz is Chair of Film and Animation and a Professor in the Conservatory of Performing Arts at Point Park University, where he works as a sound editor and mixer across motion pictures, television, and immersive media.
Hunter Dyar
Panel: Immersive Pedagogies
Saturday 4 April, 1–2pm,
Kenner Room, Tepper Building
Hugh "Hunter" Dyar is a creative technologist, photographer, developer, and educator. He has been teaching in the Immersive Media department at Chatham University since 2019, where his work focuses on digital capture technologies and novel digital media processes. He brings a practice-led perspective to questions of design, storytelling, and how virtual reality can function as a medium for meaningful learning.
Erin Reilly
Talk - Living the Story: Ritual, Memory, and the Architecture of Immersion
Friday 3 April, 12–1pm,
Peter/McKenna Rooms, CUC
Erin Reilly is a Professor and Founding Director of the Texas Immersive Institute at UT Austin. A storyteller, producer, and immersive strategist, her work spans XR, AI, and experiential design.
Her projects include Anchored Memories, a haptics-driven climate migration narrative, and the Inner Worlds Lab, a mixed reality emotional regulation environment for neurodivergent teens.
She has lectured at SXSW, AWE, and TEDx and was a founding member of USC's Annenberg Innovation Lab.
Stephen Wittek
Panel: Immersive Pedagogies
Saturday 4 April, 1–2pm,
Kenner Room, Tepper Building
Dr. Stephen Wittek is a Professor of Shakespeare Studies and Director of the Literary and Cultural Studies Program at Carnegie Mellon University.
He is the author of two scholarly monographs and co-editor of Shakespeare and Virtual Reality. His digital humanities work includes the Shakespeare-VR project and the DREaM interface for distant reading early modern texts.
Professor Uju Anya
Academic Talk
Friday 3 April, 2–3pm,
Peter/McKenna Rooms, CUC
Dr. Uju Anya is an Associate Professor of Second Language Acquisition in the Carnegie Mellon University Department of Languages, Cultures, and Applied Linguistics. A scholar of new language learning and Black experiences in multilingualism, she is a Duolingo Research Fellow, a Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellow, and a 2026-27 University of Toronto OISE Research Fellow.
Her current project, AfroMetaverse, is an intercultural Afro-diasporic platform supporting multilingual education for Black youth across four countries.