Elisabeth Gee

Elisabeth R. Gee (formerly Hayes) is the Delbert and Jewell Lewis Chair in reading and literacy, professor in Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, and the MLFTC Associate Dean of Faculty Systems.  She was a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1990-2007) where she chaired the English education program (2001-2006), and the graduate program in Continuing and Adult Education (2000-2003) prior to joining the ASU faculty. Professor Gee was on the faculty at Syracuse University (1987-1990) and Rutgers University (1986-87), where she earned her doctorate. She was a founding member of the Games, Learning and Society research collective at UW-Madison.

Professor Gee's research over the last two decades has focused primarily on understanding the literacies associated with creative and productive activities within and around digital and tabletop gaming.  As an example, she was co-PI on the National Science Foundation-funded "Play in the Making" project, that used design challenges to engage middle school students in addressing personally and socially significant real-world problems through game making in Maker spaces.  Professor Gee was named a 2011 White House Champion of Change for her work on using games and digital media to engage girls in computing. She has authored and edited numerous publications, including the books Children and Families in the Digital Age: Learning Together in a Media Saturated Culture (2018, Routledge, co-edited with L. Takeuchi and E. Wartella), Families at play:  Connecting and Learning through Video Games (2018, MIT Press, coauthored with S. Siyahhan), Re-Imagining Multiliteracies: 20 Years After the New London Group (2017, Teachers College Press, co-edited with F. Serafini), Learning in Video Game Affinity Spaces (2012, Peter Lang, co-edited with S. Duncan), and Language and Learning in the Digital Age (2011, Routledge, coauthored with J. Gee).

Professor Gee's work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Currently, she and her research team have been exploring the use of incomplete or “broken” tabletop games as a focal point for engaging participants in game design and design thinking.  A distinctive feature of this "playfixing" approach is how participants are situated as both players and designers. One goal of this work is to scaffold the game design process in a way that is more accessible for both educators and learners.