Hi there!

This is the personal site and blog of me, Sean C. Duncan. Until recently, I was a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and in January, 2010, I moved to Oxford, Ohio to begin an appointment as the C. Michael Armstrong Professor in Interactive Media, as an Assistant Professor in the School of Education, Health, and Society and Armstrong Institute for Interactive Media Studies at Miami University. Check out the links at the top to get a sense of some of my research, my latest curriculum vita, or check out my (occasionally-updated) blog elsewhere on this site. Basically, though: I study and write about “social media,” games, learning, literacy, participatory culture, fandom, and digital media more broadly.

I was born in Bowling Green, Ohio in the early 1970s, and grew up obsessed with media and technology. Like most kids, I played the classic videogames of the era, and obsessed over thriving sci-fi franchises such as Star Trek and Star Wars (check out my shirt below, that’s me in the middle, back when I was cuter and had more hair). I was a relatively typical kid, I suppose.

(That’s my childhood friend Kevin on the left and my brother, Dave, on the right, by the way.)

In my collegiate (Miami U., ‘93; B.Phil, Interdisciplinary Studies) and postcollegiate careers (including stints teaching at Miami, and working at Microsoft), I found myself continually trying to balance interests in thinking, cognition, and learning with my personal interests in “new media,” the internet, games, and fan cultures. I spent many years intentionally trying to keep the two separate — for most of the ’90s, I studied cognitive psychology (Bowling Green State U. ‘97, M. A.), with an emphasis on understanding scientific thinking. Since 2006, I have endeavored to bring these intellectual approaches to understanding the forms of thinking and learning that occur within topics nearer and dearer to my heart, working on a doctorate in Curriculum & Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

In particular, I’m currently engaged in dissertation research on the topic of design in fan communities around videogames. I believe that a renewed focus on the forms of learning and literacy practices which occur in informal communities online are key to understanding the impact that these media may have — for developing new educational models, for revising existing ones, and for helping prepare learners for the professional workplaces of the 21st century.

If you’re interested in finding out more about my current research, I suggest checking out the links above — the “Gamers As Designers” link takes you to a page regarding my dissertation research, while “Games and Learning” will take you to a page in which I describe some of the approaches I see as most valuable in studying games and learning.

I also promise to flesh out this rather sparse “bio” sometime soon, with more pictures (above, that’s a recent pic of me and Liz eating shrimp and edamame at our friends Ben and Amanda’s). If you’re interested in seeing my more day-to-day updates, check out my Twitter and also my Facebook (go ahead and send a friend request, I’m easy). Also, here’s a link to my Xbox gamertag and my last.fm recent tracks, so feel free to hit me up if you’d like to play games sometime or just like the music I listen to:

And, maybe if I’m feeling really bold, perhaps I’ll eventually post a picture of me in a Star Trek uniform.

Update [Jan 15 09]:

As promised, here’s a picture of me in a Star Trek uniform:

Well, sort of. It’s a fun Star Trek t-shirt Liz’s family gave me for Christmas, which I’m wearing at Vasquez Rocks, a park near Los Angeles which has stood in for many alien planets in the history of filmed science fiction. Yes, a nerdy childhood dream has finally come true.