We seek an enthusiastic and motivated researcher in Game Analytics to join our team in Digital Creativity Labs, bringing a desire to work across disciplines, alongside some of the world’s leading experts, to change people’s lives through research in interactive media and digital creativity.

Department

Digital Creativity Labs (DC Labs), a major (£18 million) investment by three UK research councils, four universities, and over 80 collaborative partner organisations to create a world centre of excellence for impact-driven research, focusing on digital games, interactive media and the rich space where they converge. DC Labs builds upon other projects led by the University of York including the £12 million EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Intelligent Games and Game Intelligence (www.iggi.org.uk) and the Centre for Digital Heritage (www.york.ac.uk/digital-heritage/). The City of York is uniquely placed to host DC Labs as the UK’s only UNESCO City of Media Arts, one of only 8 such cities across the world.

The post is based at the main DC Labs site at the University of York, with a vibrant community of over 20 interdisciplinary researchers. You will also engage with our University partners in London, Durham and Cornwall. The substantial investment in digital creativity at the University of York and our partners provides an excellent opportunity for you to build and work with a large research team, helping to establish a strong position as a launch pad to an academic research career or a career in research in the creative industries.

Role

You will be a key team member within DC Labs, conducting world-leading interdisciplinary research in games, bringing specific expertise in Game Analytics and Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence, applied to the analysis of player behaviour in games, and extraction of intelligence to inform knowledge, practice and tools in the Creative Industries, health, science and education.

You will be involved in a range of interdisciplinary research projects across DC Labs, with a focus on making data from Creative Media (e.g. games) actionable across research and industry. Key areas of focus in DC Labs include game analytics, esports analytics, behaviour-psychology correlations and AI for agent decision-making in games. Your research will concentrate on questions surrounding the analysis of player behaviour in esports and other commercial games using Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence, and how this can inform the design and development of games. Key research questions include: “how can we understand players through their behaviour, and recreate that behaviour using AI?”, “how can we develop esports analytics to help players engage with the game and behaviour data?” and “How can we harness gameplay data to build recommendations to players and designers?”

You will work across disciplines and co-create research and impact with users. You will have an enthusiasm for Game Analytics research across game genres and technology platforms. You will bring a multidisciplinary approach and an ability to motivate and work with interdisciplinary teams of researchers, as well as a desire to broaden your own knowledge outside your main discipline area.

Skills, Experience & Qualification needed

You will have a PhD (or equivalent experience) in Computer Science with a record of high quality scientific publications suitable to where you are in your career, and a desire to develop your career through participating in interdisciplinary research across multiple projects, solving challenging problems, research grant writing and small amounts of teaching. You have a desire to work with external stakeholders to co-create research and achieve impact via applying research to solve real-world problems in the Creative Industries. You will have good communication skills for both academic and non-academic audiences, as well as understanding of the importance of communication in motivating other members of the team. Ideally you will have experience of delivering impact, working with the industry. Within DC Labs you will grow your entrepreneurial skills and learn more about these industries by working closely with them to develop impact-driven collaborative projects and explore opportunities for commercialisation and/or for generating social and cultural outcomes. As projects will be delivered in collaboration with partner organisations you will be willing to travel and undertake short placements in these partner organisations.

Informal enquiries about this post may be directed to [email protected]

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

This post is available on a fixed term basis for 24 months.

The University is committed to promoting a diverse and inclusive community – a place where we can all be ourselves and succeed on merit. We offer a range of family friendly, inclusive employment policies, flexible working arrangements, staff engagement forums, campus facilities and services to support staff from different backgrounds.

A place where we can ALL be ourselves #EqualityatYork