Samuel Pizelo

Samuel Pizelo is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University’s Steinhardt School. His research focuses on the global history of games as model systems, tracing their influence on symbolic computation from Leibniz to AI pioneers. He holds a PhD in English (Science and Technology Studies) from UC Davis, with an M.A. and B.A. in English Literature.

• Education:
• PhD in English (UC Davis, 2023)
• M.A. in English (UC Davis)
• B.A. in English Literature (University of Washington)

Pizelo’s work bridges media studies, digital humanities, and game design. His research explores how gaming technologies shaped computational systems, appearing in journals like Representations and Game Studies. He co-founded the Degrowth Game Design Project and developed tools for NLP visualization.

His recent articles (2023–2024) emphasize interdisciplinary histories of computation and gaming, while earlier work (2014) examined postcolonial health narratives. Awards include the 2023 UC Davis Teaching Award and Englund Fellowship.

• Awards:
• UC Davis 2023 Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award
• Englund Dissertation Year Fellowship

He taught courses on game history, digital media, and interdisciplinary research, and held roles at UC Davis’s DataLab and Science & Technology Studies department. His lab work involves analog/digital game design and computational tools for humanities research.