Gina Bloom is Professor of English at the University of California, Davis, where she is also affiliated with the PhD programs in education and performance studies. She has published two monographs, Voice in Motion: Staging Gender, Shaping Sound in Early Modern England (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007) and Gaming the Stage: Playable Media and the Rise of English Commercial Theater (University of Michigan Press, 2018). She also co-edited with Tom Bishop and Erika T. Lin the collection Games and Theatre in Shakespeare’s England (Amsterdam University Press, 2021). She is currently collaborating with South African high school educators Lauren Bates and Linda Ritchie to explore how play-based approaches to Shakespeare can help teachers and students address violence in their communities.
Evan Buswell is a multidisciplinary scholar working in the intersection of code, mathematics, theory, philosophy, and economic history. Evan received a Ph.D. in cultural studies from UC Davis in 2020. Currently, he is investigating the epistemological limits of artificial intelligence and related systems, as experienced by both the AIs themselves and by the humans that use them. As a complementary practice, he spends a lot of time doing critical making research. In addition to Play the Knave, Evan has written an experimental family of programming languages, the Noneleatic Languages, and he is currently creating analog electronic musical instruments as New Systems Instruments.
Colin Milburn is Gary Snyder Chair in Science and the Humanities and Professor of Science and Technology Studies, English, and Cinema and Digital Media at the University of California, Davis. His research focuses on the relations of science, literature, and media technologies. His books include Nanovision: Engineering the Future (Duke University Press, 2008), Mondo Nano: Fun and Games in the World of Digital Matter (Duke University Press, 2015), Respawn: Gamers, Hackers, and Technogenic Life (Duke University Press, 2018), and Practices of Speculation: Modeling, Embodiment, Figuration, co-edited with Jeanne Cortiel, Christine Hanke, Jan Simon Hutta (transcript, 2020). At UC Davis, he also serves as chair of the Department of Science and Technology Studies.
Nick Toothman is Assistant Professor of Computer Science at California State University, Bakersfield, where he manages the XR Lab for research on virtual, augmented, and cross-reality experiences with an emphasis on multiplayer collaboration. His research focuses on virtual reality, digital performance capture, and game development. In 2020, he received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from UC Davis, where he studied expressive character deformation and real-time computer graphics. Outside of Play the Knave, his work on digital puppetry and character controls systems has appeared in Digital Movement: Essays in Motion Technology and Performance, edited by Sita Popat and Nicolas Salazar Sutil (Palgrave MacMillan, 2015).