Janet
H. Murray
Professor and Director of Graduate Studies
School of Literature, Communication and Culture
Georgia Institute of Technology
E-mail: janet.murray at lcc.gatech.edu
Office: Skiles Classroom Building, Rm. 335
Phone: (404) 894-6202
Hamlet on the Holodeck | Living Gameworlds Symposium | eTV Group | EGL | MTG
Casablanca Digital Critical Edition Project | InTEL Engineering Education Project |
Professor Janet H. Murray is an internationally recognized interactive designer, the director of Georgia Tech's Masters and PhD Program in Digital Media, and a member of Georgia Tech's interdisciplinary GVU Center. She is the author of Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace (Free Press, 1997; MIT Press 1998), which has been translated into 5 languages, and is widely used as a roadmap to emerging broadband art, information, and entertainment environments. She is currently working on a textbook for MIT Press, Inventing the Medium: A Principled Approach to Interactive Design. Recent interactive design projects at include a digital edition of the Warner Brothers classic, Casablanca, funded by NEH and in collaboration with the American Film Institute; and the InTEL Engineering Education Project, funded by NSF. In addition, she directs an eTV Prototyping Group, which has worked on interactive television applications for PBS, ABC , MTV, Turner, and other networks. She is also a member Georgia Tech's Experimental Game Lab (EGL) and an advisor to Georgia Tech's Mobile Technology Group (MTG).
Murray has played an active role in the development of two new degree programs at Georgia Tech, both 0f which were launched in Fall 2004: the Ph.D. in Digital Media, and the B.S. in Computational Media.
In spring 2000 Janet Murray was named a Trustee of the American Film Institute, where she has alsoserved as a mentor in the AFI Digital Content Lab. She holds a Ph.D. in English from Harvard University, and before coming to Georgia Tech in 1999 taught humanities and led advanced interactive design projects at MIT.
Murray’s primary fields of interest are digital media curricula, interactive narrative, story/games, interactive television, and large-scale multimedia information spaces. Her projects have been funded by IBM, Apple Computer, the Annenberg-CPB Project, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Science Foundation.
Media Coverage
100 Most Influential Women in Games Next Generation September 2006
11 Alive News Video: New PhD in Digital Media April 2005
Channel 2 News Video: IDT Demo Day May 2005
Recent and Upcoming Conferences and Talks
InTEL Project: Interactive Toolkit for Engineering Education, Georgia Tech Advisory Board, September 2007
Atlanta Women in Film Panel, Are You Game? August 22 2007
"Mind, Media, and Learning: Next Generation Educational Applications of Interactivity," Learning Sciences Lab, Singapore National Institute of Education, June 2007
Living Game Worlds '07, March 29 2007 (streaming videos)
“Private Holodeck or Global Carnival? Emerging Genres in a Rapidly Changing Medium” Towards the Holodeck Panel, IBC 2006, Amsterdam, Sept 9 2006
Casablanca Project, President’s Commission on Arts and Humanities, Los Angeles , May 2006
Living Game Worlds '06 March 2006 (streaming videos)
Virtual Storytelling '05 , Strasbourg France, November 30 - December 2, 2005
Re-Inventing Television Summit, Interactive Television Alliance, Queen Mary, Long Beach CA, August 2005
DiGRA '05 Vancouver CA Keynote June 17 (slides and preface text posted)
Living Gameworlds Symposium in Honor of Will Wright: Georgia Tech March 16 2005 (streaming videos)
Clifford Symposium and opening of the Middlebury Library October 2004
Some Recent Publications:
“Toward a Cultural Theory of Gaming: Digital Games and the Co-Evolution of Media, Mind, and Culture " Popular Communication, 4(3), 185-202 2006
"Here's Looking at Casablanca," Humanities Magazine, September/October 2005
Humanities Approaches to Digital Media Studies, Chronicle of Higher Education June 24, 2005
Asking what is possible: the Georgia Tech Approach to Games Research and Education co-authored with Ian Bogost, Michael Mateas, and Michael Nitsche, International Digital Media and Arts Association Journal, vol 2, no 1, Spring 2005, pp 59 - 68
Introduction to the New Media Reader, chapter in First Person (MIT 2004), and Ivory Tower column for IGDA.