Video games offer opportunities for play, learning, and work, but they can also propagate harms to marginalised communities. Information systems, including video games, are embedded in our lives. How can we design for joy, rather than harm?

A/Prof. Phoebe Toups Dugas "“ a queer, trans woman gamer "“ pulls apart games to understand how to make them better and how to use games to make the world a better place. This work supports underserved groups "“ most recently queer gamers, but previously disaster responders.

Phoebe earned her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Texas A&M University in 2010. She went on to work at the Disaster City responder training facility, then joined New Mexico State University for ten years. She co-founded the Transgender Name Change Policy Working Group, which transformed inclusive publishing practices. During her tenure, she attracted over 3 million AUD in research funding from the National Science Foundation to support her work on disaster response. She recently relocated to Australia to join Monash University in the Faculty of Information Technology, where she is focused on transgender inclusivity in information system design.