Panagiotis Fotaris

<p>Dr Panagiotis Fotaris is a Principal Lecturer in Game Design and User Experience at the University of Brighton. His research focuses on game-based learning, educational escape rooms, narrative game design, user experience, and the role of generative AI in learning and creative practice.</p> <p>He has published widely on educational escape rooms, gamification, reflective game design, augmented reality game-based learning, and AI-supported design workflows. His work includes the Room2Educ8 framework, a systematic review of educational escape rooms, and research on generative AI as a support tool for educational escape room design. He has also co-edited special issues and conference proceedings on game-based learning, educational escape rooms, and related areas.</p> <p>His academic background spans computing, multimedia, digital media, and pedagogy. He holds a PhD in Applied Informatics, an MA in Graphic Arts and Multimedia, an MSc in Distributed and Multimedia Information Systems, a BSc in Informatics and Telecommunications, and a PgCert in Academic Practice. He is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a Certified ScrumMaster®, a Professional Member of the British Computer Society, and a member of Ukie and the Ukie Education Working Group.</p> <p>Dr Fotaris has held several academic leadership roles. At the University of Brighton, he was Course Leader for BSc (Hons) Digital Games Development and BSc (Hons) Computer Science for Games, and he currently contributes to teaching, curriculum development, quality assurance, industry engagement, and research across games, UX, design thinking, computing, and creative technologies. Before joining Brighton, he was Programme Leader for BSc (Hons) Digital Media Design at the University of East London.</p> <p>His teaching and curriculum work are closely connected to industry-facing practice. He has developed partnerships and student engagement activity with organisations including Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Unity Technologies, Activision/Blizzard, Creative Assembly, GitHub, TT Games, Studio Gobo, and Hangar 13, supporting live briefs, guest talks, game jams, employability activity, and student competition mentoring.</p> <p>Dr Fotaris has chaired international conferences including the European Conference on Games Based Learning, the European Conference on e-Learning, and the European Conference on Social Media. He has also chaired conference tracks on educational escape rooms, game-based learning, and virtual, augmented and mixed reality in education. He is an Editorial Board Member for <em>Digital Games and Gaming</em> (MDPI), and regularly reviews for journals and conferences in game-based learning, technology-enhanced learning, virtual reality, human-computer interaction, and digital media.</p> <p>He has delivered keynote talks, invited talks, panels, and workshops across Europe on educational escape rooms, game-based learning, generative AI, and design thinking. His recent invited work includes talks and workshops on GenAI-enhanced educational escape room design, AI in education, and the Room2Educ8 framework.</p> <p>Alongside his academic work, Dr Fotaris maintains a creative practice in music, sound, remix culture, and AI-assisted literary-to-song adaptation (<a href="https://www.djbynar.com/">djbynar.com</a>). His recent journal article, “AI-Assisted Literary-to-Song Adaptation: A Practice-Based Study of Literary Interpretation in a Text-to-Audio Workflow”, examines the use of generative AI, lyric adaptation, music production, and human curation in transforming literary texts into songs. This work connects his interests in narrative, sound, generative AI, media production, and creative interpretation.</p> <h3>Invited Talks, Keynotes, and Webinars</h3> <p>Dr Fotaris has delivered keynote and invited talks on educational escape rooms, game-based learning, generative AI, design thinking, and digital media. Selected examples include:</p> <ul><li> <p>Keynote Speaker, Intelligent Tutoring Systems 2024, Thessaloniki: GenAI-enhanced educational escape room design</p> </li><li> <p>Keynote Speaker, Escape Rooms in Education: Showcase and Celebration of Practice, Heriot-Watt University, 2023</p> </li><li> <p>Keynote Speaker, 3rd Symposium on Games in Learning, Nottingham Trent University, 2022</p> </li><li> <p>Invited Panelist and Speaker, AI in Education Forum, London, 2024</p> </li><li> <p>Invited Speaker, Develop, 2018 and 2019</p> </li></ul> <p>He is regularly invited to contribute to events and academic communities concerned with game-based learning, playful pedagogy, educational escape rooms, and generative AI in education.</p> <h3>Workshops</h3> <p>Dr Fotaris has designed and facilitated hands-on workshops on educational escape room design, game-based learning, design thinking, and generative AI since 2019. These workshops have been delivered through the European Conference on Games Based Learning and at universities and academic networks across Europe.</p> <p>His workshops combine research-informed design methods with practical activities, supporting educators and researchers to design, prototype, test, and evaluate playful learning experiences.</p>