Sonia Fizek is a digital wanderer and a ludic thinker. On a more formal note, a digital games and media theorist. Since 2020 Fizek has been holding a professorship in Media and Game Studies at TH Köln, Cologne Game Lab, where she is also the Head of Research. Additionally, she is the co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds as well as a visiting research professor at the University of Lower Silesia in Poland.
Education and Professional Experience
Sonia Fizek studied English Literature and Linguistics at the University of Lodz (Poland), graduating in 2007 with an M.A. thesis on the rise of cyberfiction and the impact of digital technology on literature. She then pursued her academic path as a doctoral candidate at Bangor University (UK) where she completed her PhD in media and game studies.
Over the last fifteen years, she has gained ample experience as an educator, researcher, leader and mentor at various higher education institutions across Europe. In 2019 she held a professorship at Media Akademie – Hochschule Stuttgart and prior to that a lectureship in game studies and design at the School of Informatics and Design at Abertay University in Dundee (Scotland). In the years 2013-2015, she was a post-doctoral researcher at the Centre for Digital Cultures at Leuphana University Lüneburg. She also worked as a film festival coordinator, team leader, freelance blogger, and translator with over 10 years of experience in the fields of technology, film, and dental medicine.
Fizek is an active member of the research community as a co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds, and a board member for multiple journals. She also serves as an advisory expert and external counsellor to many initiatives, such as the German Toy Industry Association (Deutscher Verband der Spielwarenindustrie, DVSI). In 2024 she was a jury member for the German Computer Games Award (Deutscher Computerspielpreis, DCP) and in the years 2021-2024 she was a jury member for the Kreativ-Transfer, a funding program supported by the Federal Government for Culture and Media (Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien, BKM).
Websites: https://th-koeln.academia.edu/SoniaFizek
Teaching
Sonia Fizek has been teaching at various international higher education institutions in the UK, Germany, and Poland: Bangor University, Abertay University, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Goethe University of Frankfurt, Design Akademie Berlin, and the University of Lodz. This experience has allowed her to develop a rich didactic repertoire. At TH Köln, Cologne Game Lab, she offers a wider range of seminars for B.A. and M.A. students in Media and Game Studies with a focus on digital play theory, critical player research, aesthetics of digital games and media, queerness, and environmental issues around gaming.
Research Priorities
Fizek works at the intersection between game studies, media theory and digital cultures. Her latest book Playing at a Distance. Borderlands of Video Game Aesthetic (MIT Press 2022) is an exploration of human-non-human distributed agency in videogames, with a focus on AI and automation. Fizek is also interested in questions related to materiality of digital media, media ethics and politics, production studies as well as environmental sustainability of video games and their development.
Current Research Projects
Greening Games – Building Higher Education Resources for Sustainable Video Game Production, Design, and Critical Game Studies (2021-2024, Principal Investigator & Project Coordinator)
http://greeningames.eu
Granting Institution: DAAD German National Agency,
Program: Erasmus+ KA220-HED – Cooperation Partnerships in higher education
Consortium: TH Köln, Charles University of Prague, Breda University of Applied Sciences, Turku University
Sustainable Transformation for Europe’s Game Industries (STRATEGIES) (2024-2027, Work Package Scientific Lead)
https://www.strategieshorizon.eu
Granting Institution: European Union
Program: “Cultural and creative industries for a sustainable climate transition” (Horizon-CL2-2023-heritage-01-02)
Consortium: TH Köln, Manchester Metropolitan University, Aalborg University, Warsaw University, Utrecht University, Malta University, also including leading private sector partners in the European video game and board game industry
Publications
Selected list of publications (more can be found at https://th-koeln.academia.edu/SoniaFizek)
Fizek, S. (2024). Playing for Future(s). Can video games help us re-write the future in times of climate crisis? Futures Literacy Dossier. Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung.
https://www.bpb.de/themen/kultur/digitale-spiele/546959/spielen-fuer-die-zukunft/
Fizek, S. (2024). Material Infrastructures of Play. How the Games Industry Reimagines Itself in the Face of Climate Crisis. In Ecogames. Playful Perspectives on the Climate Crisis, eds. Raessens, Joost / Werning, Stefan / Op de Becke, Laura. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789048557219/ecogames
Fizek, S., Fiadotau M, Garda, B. M., Wirman, H. (2023). Teaching environmentally-conscious game design: Lessons and challenges. In Games: Research and Practice. ACM Journals (Association for Computing Machinery). ACM Digital Library, ETC Press: https://dl.acm.org/doi/full/10.1145/3583058.
Fizek, s. (2023). Editorial: The spectated, the social, the beautiful and the caring. Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds, 15.3, Bristol: Intellect.
Fizek, S. et al. (2023). Greening Games Education. A Report on Teaching and Researching Environmental Sustainability in the Context of Video Games. The report is a deliverable of an EU/DAAD funded project „Greening Games“: http://greeningames.eu/greening-games-education-report/
Fizek, S. (2022). Playing at a Distance: Borderlands of Video Game Aesthetic. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
www.mitpress.mit.edu/9780262544627/playing-at-a-distance/
Fizek, S. (2022). Through the Ludic Glass: Making Sense of Games as Algorithmic Spectacles. Special Issue: Game Analysis Reloaded. Game Studies 22 (2).