Ahu Yolac

Ahu Yolac is a game studies researcher, game designer, and gamer. She looks at video games as multidisciplinary spaces and she explores ways to create opportunities for collaboration in and through games among multiple disciplines, players, designers, and game enthusiasts. As a gamer herself, she plays board games, tabletop RPG games, and video games. She is also a very successful moon druid in her D&D campaign.

Ahu is interested in informal learning outcomes, such as thinking ways and strategies that are a result of and encouraged through gameplay. She explores game design approaches and practices that focus on encouraging intentionality and criticality for both players and designers. Her current research focuses on critical and transdisciplinary learning experiences in and through video games.

Her research interests are game design; game studies; gaming subculture; virtual environments; critical play; art, design, and technology in education; virtual spaces; and video games as pedagogical tools.

Ahu is a multidisciplinary designer. She holds a Ph.D. in Arts Education with a focus on Game Design and Game Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, an MSc in Industrial Design from Middle East Technical University, and a BFA in Interior Architecture and Environmental Design from Bilkent University.