Global Game Jam®️ is happy to announce that Charly Harbord has joined our team as the new Director of Operations, taking over for Tim Cullings who recently became Executive Director of GGJ. Charly comes with a wealth of experience working with game development communities, is a very well respected champion of equality, diversity, and inclusion in the game industry, and founded and hosted her own game jam based on the preservation of indigenous languages and cultures. We are fortunate to have her on our team and are excited to see what she will do to raise the bar for our community and events. Please join us in giving her a warm welcome and read on to learn more about some of the things she has done on her path to get here.
Ms. Charly Harbord holds a degree in Mandarin and Chinese Culture, which she gained whilst living in China. She holds a Masters in International Education from the University of Dundee. She is in the final stages of a PhD in Games and Arts, focused on ‘The Co-Design of Role-Playing Games for the Enhancement of Indigenous/Second Languages’. She founded the Kilted Otter Initiative, a cultural heritage and language research-based game jam. As well as being the Game Designer in Residence for Women in Games, she is also the Women in Games Twitch Manager. She has several peer-reviewed publications on the use of games for language education including a chapter in the newly released book ‘Digital Games and Language Learning: Theory, Development and Implementation’. She has presented her research at several international industry and academic conferences including GDC, Devcom and DiGRA. Also having given three keynote speeches, the most prestigious of which was the (United Nations) ONU Mujeres Women in Games Mexico Jam Conference in December 2020.