Student Spotlight: How to get a PhD in Game Studies (feat. Yiming Skylar Lei)

SPARTIE-Cast with Dr. Robby Ratan

In this episode, host Robby Ratan speaks with Yiming Skylar Lei, a Ph.D. student in the Information and Media program at Michigan State University, and a very productive member of the SPARTIE Lab.

They discuss her childhood curiosity about gaming and how it led to her pursuit of a Ph.D. in game studies. She shares some advice for potential students who want to follow her path, her interests in the prosocial benefits of cooperative video games, why she thinks Guild Wars 2 is one of the best collaborative games out there, and the psychology behind her cringey reaction to Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

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About this week's guest:
Yiming Skylar Lei is a Ph.D. student in the Information and Media program at Michigan State University and member of the SPARTIE Lab. Her bachelor's degree is in sociology and her master's degree is in emerging media studies.

Her research interests include the psychological processing and effects of simulated worlds in interactive technologies like video games and virtual reality and how factors inside and outside the simulation influence users.

About the SPARTIE Lab:

The Social and Psychological Approaches to Research on Technology-Interaction Effects (SPARTIE) Lab performs research on the effects of human-technology interaction, examining how the use of media technologies (e.g., avatars, agents, automobiles) influences meaningful outcomes (e.g., education, health/safety, persuasion).

The SPARTIE Lab is part of the greater academic community at the College of Communication Arts & Sciences at Michigan State University. More information on the lab's research projects, staff, and work can be found on the SPARTIE Lab website.

About the host:

Dr. Rabindra (Robby) Ratan, Ph. D., is an associate professor and AT&T Scholar at Michigan State University’s Department of Media and Information and is the director of the SPARTIE Lab.

He is also an affiliated faculty member of the MSU Department of Psychology, the MSU College of Education’s program in Educational Psychology and Educational Technology, and the MSU Center for Gender in a Global Context. Ratan received his Ph.D. from USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, his M.A. in Communication from Stanford University, and his B.A. in Science, Technology and Society, also from Stanford University.

Dr. Ratan conducts research on the effects of human-technology interaction, examining how media technologies (e.g., avatars, agents, automobiles) influence meaningful outcomes (e.g., persuasion, education, health/safety). He is particularly interested in the Proteus effect, media-rich transportation contexts, perceptions of media as self-representations and/or social others, avatarification for health and education, and gender stereotypes in gaming contexts.

Dr. Ratan lives near Lansing with his family. More information on his work can be found on his website.