Bio
About Spencer Striker, PhD
I grew up primarily in New England—between Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts—and spent some of my youth in Southern California and Europe. I completed high school in Chicago, and received highest honors degrees in History and Film Production from the University of Texas at Austin. Upon graduation, I lived in Costa Rica, Honduras, and Brazil, while trying my hand at writing novels. I found that I missed the intensity of cross-disciplinary media production—so in the Fall of 2006, I entered the Media School at Indiana University at Bloomington. My Master’s thesis project was the four-time Webby Award winning original series, GameZombie TV. In the Fall of 2009, I expanded the GameZombie curriculum to the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater and co-founded the Media Arts & Game Development Program.
Simultaneously, I completed a PhD in Digital Media from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, defending my dissertation in the Fall of 2012. I moved to Silicon Valley in 2013 and became Founding Creative Director for a digital media & learning startup in Mountain View, CA called Galxyz. There, I worked hard to quarterback the building of a next gen learning product—backed by Relay Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and the Emerson Collective. Missing the professorial lifestyle: in the Fall of 2015, I returned to academia, accepting a position as Digital Media professor at the American University in Dubai. While there, I developed the award-winning History Adventures digital learning series. Beginning in the Fall of 2019, I began a new adventure, as Associate Professor of Digital Media Design at Northwestern University in Qatar—studying, teaching, and producing digital media and technology in Doha, one of the most innovative and entrepreneurial cities of the 21st century.
Academia
Associate Professor of Digital Media Design
Northwestern University in Qatar
Associate Professor of Digital Media
Coordinator of the Digital Media Program
American University in Dubai
Industry
Founder
History Adventures
Founding Creative Director
Galxyz
Founder & Executive Producer
GameZombie TV
Co-Founder & Lecturer
Media Arts & Game Development
University of Wisconsin at Whitewater
Education
PhD, Digital Media, 2012
University of Wisconsin at Madison
M.S., New Media Production & Design, 2008
Indiana University at Bloomington
B.S., Radio-TV-Film, 2001
B.A., History, 2001
University of Texas at Austin
Highest Honors, Phi Beta Kappa
Digital Media Awards - Selections
2022 Anthem Awards: Education, Art, & Culture - Silver Medal
2021 Tech Edvocate Award - Best Augmented Reality App
2021 Best Educational App, Reimagine Education Awards - Nominee
2021 W3 Silver Award - Best Mobile App for Education
2021 Best New Mobile App, Mobile App Awards - Nominee
2020 Reimagine Education Award, History Adventures - Nominee
2019 Horizon Interactive: Gold Award
2012 Digital Media & Learning Competition - Finalist
2010 Webby Award
2010 People’s Voice Webby Award
2010 Mashable Award, Finalist - Best Web Video
2009 Webby Honoree Award
2008 Webby Honoree Award
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