Gabriela Richard is a doctoral candidate and adjunct instructor at NYU whose research focuses on understanding the intersection between culture, experience, media and learning. She is currently completing her doctorate in the Educational Communication and Technology program. Her dissertation looks at the ways in which gender, ethnicity and sexuality are promoted, experienced, reflected, reenacted, and redefined in game culture by the various stakeholders and participants (from developers to players), as well as how gendered experience ultimately affects perceptions of and participation in game culture. Her research speaks more broadly to issues important to media designed for formal and informal education, specifically focusing on how to design educational media and technology that is overall inclusive and sensitive to how designed social realities can disproportionately affect achievement.

She has received funding from the National Science Foundation and the American Association of University Women in support of her research. She has a master’s degree in interactive and embodied design, and an undergraduate degree in media, culture and communication. She is a member of the Design of Learning, Collaboration and Experience (dolce) lab at NYU, headed by her advisor Christopher Hoadley, and will be transitioning to the University of Pennsylvania as an early career scholar under the mentorship of Yasmin Kafai in fall 2013.