about me
I’m a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Digital Narrative at the University of Bergen, as part of the LEAD AI programme. My current project looks at nonplayer characters in games with AI-generated dialogue, how players respond to the use of this technology and how this use may challenge ideas in the philosophy of fiction like intentionality. I am also an editor for Eludamos.
Previously, I was a postdoc at the University of Bremen, part of the Media and Religion lab in the ZeMKI Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research. There I focused on community formation in digital games and taught media studies, games and design in the ZeMKI’s study programmes. I was also the managing editor for gamevironments.
I wrote my PhD at the IT University of Copenhagen’s Center for Digital Play between 2019 and 2022.
Here you’ll find links to all the other relevant internet places you can find me at, all of my publications, games and other projects, and the occasional blog post whenever I feel like writing something here.
Last updated 21 July 2026.
my books
Scholar’s Codex, a public-facing edited collection I co-edited with Stefano Gualeni, Nele Van de Mosselaer and Daniel Vella, published by Tune & Fairweather. It features essays on the Souls games by 22 academics and writers, each focusing on an item from one of the games.
Mytholudics: Games and Myth proposes a method for analysing games both as conduits of mythologies within society and as mythological structures in themselves. It’s out now and published by De Gruyter.
peer review requests
Please note that I prioritise my reviewing labour for diamond open access journals. If your journal is published by a for-profit publisher, I am very likely to say no.
Latest publication
Ford, D. (2026). The obscurity of origins in reality formation: Slender Man and digital mythology. In Holand, A. M., & Ravnå, P. B. (Eds.), Reality in our times: reaching reality beyond the post-truth condition (pp. 135–156). De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111703886-006
Latest conference talk
Ford, D. (2026, June 16). Promise and paradox: What is the future being promoted for AI NPCs? [Workshop lightning talk]. DiGRA 2026: Intersectional Pleasures, Maynooth, Ireland.
Latest post
Interviewed for Ludomythologies project
Latest press or media
Hacktivizm, İfşacılık ve Sosyal Adalet [Hacktivism, whistleblowing and social justice]