Frans Mäyrä

Frans Mäyrä is the Professor of Information Studies and Interactive Media, with specialization in digital culture and game studies in the Tampere University, Finland. He is the founder and head of Tampere University Game Research Lab. Frans Mäyrä has studied the relationship of culture and technology from the early nineties and he has specialised in the cultural analysis of technology, particularly on the ambiguous, conflicting and heterogeneous elements in this relationship. Professor Mäyrä has published on topics that range from information technologies, science fiction and fantasy to the demonic tradition, the concept of identity and role-playing games. He is currently teaching, researching and heading numerous research projects in the study and development of games, interactive media and digital culture. He has also served as the founding President of Digital Games Research Association, DiGRA. He is recipient of grants and leader or parther in over 50 externally funded games research projects, with total external funding of exeeding ten million euros. He is currently the director of the Academy of Finland funded Centre of Excellence in Game Culture Studies (CoE-GameCult, 2018-2025). He had led also several other large consortium research projects, like Ludification of Culture and Society (2014-2018). Author of An Introduction to Game Studies (2008), one of the leading textbooks in the field, he has over 160 scientific publications, including the work published e.g. in Journal of Communication, Video Game Policy, The Video Game Debate and The Dark Side of Game Play.

See the personal home pages at: https://www.unet.fi/ 

See the blog site at: https://fransmayra.fi/ 

Professor, Director of the Centre of Excellence in Game Culture Studies.

Expertise in the study of the cultural and social dimensions of information and communications technologies, games, interactive media.

Game cultures, game players, interactive media, digital culture.

See the list of publications at: https://www.unet.fi/publications/