Biography

1 Short-CV

Since March 2025, I have been Professor Emeritus and am working again as a freelance author.

Before, I was a Co-Director and full Professor of Media and Game Studies at the Cologne Game Lab (CGL), an institute of the Technical University Cologne that I co-founded in 2010 with Prof. Bjoern Bartholdy. In parallel, I was teaching as an Associate Professor for Comparative Media Studies at the ifs international film school köln, where—from 2004 to 2014—I was a Professor of Aesthetics and Communication, later a full Professor of Comparative Media Studies. From 2020 to 2021, I was also a Visiting Professor at Manchester Metropolitan University.

For the 2023/24 academic year, I have received “Opus Magnum” funding from the VW Foundation to finish my monograph, Play: Audiovisuality in the Modern Era-Theater, Film, Television, Games. It is scheduled to be published in winter 2025/26.

Prior to my academic career, I worked in the US as a freelance writer focusing on the social, cultural, and aesthetic consequences of digitalization for (audio-) visual art and communication (1994-2004). In Germany, I was a reporter at large of Tempo magazine (1992-1994), department head and reporter of stern magazine (1983-1990), and editor of the monthly TransAtlantik (1981-1983).

I studied Comparative, German and American literature at the Free University Berlin and worked there as a research assistant. My Master’s thesis concerned itself with modern drama, and my dissertation explored the digitalization of art and entertainment.

I have published more than 20 books of fiction and non-fiction and over 400 papers, essays, short stories, and articles. My last monograph was Games, Game Design, Game Studies. An Introduction. With Contributions by André Czauderna, Nathalie Pozzi and Eric Zimmerman, published in 2015 by transcript, distributed in the US by Columbia University Press. There are also Amazon Kindle and Epub versions available.

Since 2012, I have been co-editing, together with Prof. Lisa Gotto, the publication series “Bild und Bit. Studien zur digitalen Medienkultur” published by transcript in Bielefeld. The most recent volumes in the series are Paratextualizing Games: Investigations on the Paraphernalia and Peripheries of Play (2021), co-edited with Benjamin Beil and Hanns Christian Schmidt; Playful Materialities: The Stuff That Games Are Made Of (2022), co-edited with Benjamin Beil, Hanns Christian Schmidt, and Raven Rusch; and Gaming the Metaverse (2025), co-edited with Benjamin Beil, Isabelle Hamm, and Vanessa Ossa. 

From 2018 to 2025, I was a member of the Academy of Finland’s Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) for the Centre of Excellence in Game Culture Studies.

From 2015 to 2022, I co-chaired —with Prof. Björn Bartholdy—the program board of  “Clash of Realities—International Conference on the Art, Technology, and Theory of Digital Games.”

CV incl. List of Publications as pdf file –> here