News and Events
- 15 October: A big welcome to Annie Beingessner (English), Charlie Susheski (Anthropology), and Christina Woods (Media Studies), who will be working with us in the Studio this year!
- 9 July: We invite submissions to a special issue of The Digital Review on "Video Essays about Video Games." Abstracts are due to jentery@uvic.ca by Monday, October 6, 2025.
- 20 March: Join us in person at 1pm Pacific for Dr. Bo Ruberg's talk, "How to Queer the World: Radical Worldbuilding through Video Games."
- 27 February: Join us online at 1pm Pacific for the 2024-25 Lansdowne Lecture in Media Studies at UVic. Dr. Kishonna L. Gray will share her research on "Designing Blackness in Digital Gaming."
Who We Are
We are a group of researchers who study the aesthetics and politics of media by blending theory with practice:
- Annie Beingessner (English)
- Callum Carroll-Ireton (Media Studies and Computer Science)
- Maya Wei Yan Linsley (English)
- April Rogers (English)
- Jentery Sayers (Media Studies and English; director)
- Charlie Susheski (Anthropology)
- Christina Woods (Media Studies and English)
- Samuel Adesubokan (English; 2020-24)
- Tracey El Hajj (English; graduated in 2020)
- Abby Fry (Writing and Greek & Roman Studies; 2022-23)
- Julie M. Funk (English and CSPT; graduated in 2024)
- Braeden Hallman (English; 2021-22)
- Stefan Higgins (English and CSPT; graduated in 2020)
- Enoch Hu (Greek & Roman Studies; 2024-25)
- Madyson Huck (English; graduated in 2023)
- Hector Lopez (English; graduated in 2020)
- Emma Newtwon (Greek & Roman Studies; 2023-24)
- Dayne Pettyjohn (English and Writing; graduated in 2025)
- Faith Ryan (English; graduated in 2021)
- Alana Sayers (English; 2019-21)
- Marie Silhova (Pacific and Asian Studies; graduated in 2025)
- Lexy Townsend (English; 2020-21)
- Asia Tyson (English; graduated in 2023)
- Joel Wheeler (English; graduated in 2024)
We value decolonization, situated knowledge, the space of place, experimental methods, and integrative approaches to media: old + new, analog + digital, still + moving, popular + obscure, immersive + meta.
We acknowledge and respect the Lək̓ʷəŋən (Songhees and Xʷsepsəm/Esquimalt) Peoples on whose territory the university stands, and the Lək̓ʷəŋən and W̱SÁNEĆ Peoples whose historical relationships with the land continue to this day.
What We Do
We identify pressing topics in media studies, articulate them as Studio themes, research and write about them, and hold events to engage them. Our current themes are:
- Player Stories: examining how people document and narrate their experiences with games
- Videographic Criticism: pushing the boundaries of the video essay as a scholarly format
- Media Literacy and Pedagogy: fostering the "people skills" of critical media practice
If you'd like to know more about our research, then please don't hesitate to contact us.
What We Aren't
We are not a blog, brand, dev team, fab lab, digital humanities project, or humanities computing centre. We do not offer courses, either, but UVic Media Studies does!
Support and History
We are housed in the Media Studies program, which is administered by UVic's Faculty of Humanities. We were members of the SpokenWeb project, and our current research is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI). We began as The Maker Lab in the Humanities in 2012 and became The Praxis Studio for Comparative Media Studies in 2019. All work belongs to our researchers (not to the Studio), and no position in the Studio is unpaid.
Contact Us
We're located in UVic's Clearihue building. You can email our director, Jentery Sayers (he | him), at jentery@uvic.ca.
Thanks for visiting. We built this site with files from Mike Choi's "Paper" theme and last updated it on 15 October 2025.
