Jennifer Jenson

Dr. Jennifer Jenson serves as Professor of Digital Languages, Literacies, and Cultures within the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia's Faculty of Education. She joined UBC in January 2019 after 18 years at York University, where she directed the Institute for Research on Digital Learning. Her academic leadership extends to co-editing Loading: The Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association and past presidency of the Canadian Game Studies Association.

Dr. Jenson holds a Ph.D. from Simon Fraser University. Her research program critically examines digital games, literacies, and pedagogical practices through lenses of gender, equity, and decolonization. She has conducted longitudinal studies on gender and digital gameplay, developed educational games through the Play:CES lab, and authored influential reports for the Ontario Ministry of Education including “21st Century Skills, Technologies and Learning”.

Her publication trajectory (2015-2023) reveals consistent focus on regendering game cultures, multimodal learning frameworks, and computational literacy in youth media engagement. Work spans critical analysis of “The Entrepreneurial Gamer” concept to contemporary digital literacies in multimodal contexts, emphasizing how game-based learning can disrupt exclusionary practices while advancing inclusive education.

No scientific awards were explicitly documented in the source materials.

Dr. Jenson maintains active graduate supervision, currently advising doctoral candidates like Laura Brass researching immigrant women language teachers’ identities. Her sustained research funding includes leadership of the international SSHRC Partnership Grant “Re-Figuring Innovation in Games” (2015-2021) and SSHRC Insight Grant “Think, Design, Play” (2014-2020), with collaborations spanning school boards, technology companies, and global institutions like SRI International and Nottingham University.

She co-founded the CFI-funded Play:CES lab where teams developed educational games including “Contagion” and “Epidemic: Self-Care for Crisis”, and currently leads the Re-Figuring Innovation in Games (ReFiG) collective – an international consortium of scholars, community organizers, and industry partners dedicated to transforming game culture through equity-centered innovation.