Our 2024 Presenters

Ahmed Alameen

My Father Lied: A Mystery That reveals History… And Myths 

Saturday March 9 at 11 am US Central Time

Ahmed Alameen is an Iraqi writer/indie game developer. His screenplay, Children of Mesopotamia, received awards and nominations by international writing competitions for best feature screenplay, and he had won best writer and the golden script award at Paris Screenplay Awards for his screenplay, Once Upon A Time In Baghdad. With the desire to bring more stories inspired by Mesopotamian history and myths to the gaming world, he started making his first debut indie game, My Father Lied, to tell a story from where the first stories were written.

Roselyn A. Campbell

The Queen and the NPC: Player Perceptions of Gender in Assassin's Creed

Saturday March 9 at 3 pm US Central Time

Dr. Roselyn A. Campbell is bioarchaeologist and Egyptologist. She received her PhD in archaeology from the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA. Dr. Campbell conducted archaeological fieldwork across many sites in Egypt, including the Valley of the Kings, Deir el Bahri, and Tell Edfu, as well as in Jordan, Peru, Ethiopia, Spain, and the western United States. Her research focuses on anthropological studies of state-sanctioned violence in the past through the analysis of human remains, as well as on evidence for cancer in antiquity.  She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Biological Anthropology at the University of California, Riverside, and the Assistant Director of the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy. Her favorite video games are Assassin's Creed: Black Flag and God of War.  

Lexie Henning 

Reception of Ancient Mesopotamia in House of Ashes

with Megan Lewis and E.L. Meszaros

Saturday March 9, 12 pm US Central Time

Lexie earned her BA in Classics from the University of Missouri (Mizzou) in 2018. Prior to co-founding The Ozymandias Project, she worked on political campaigns, interned on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C., and worked for the Illinois State Senate. Her scholarly interests are in exploring Classical reception through the lens of contemporary storytelling in media, advocating for open access to the ancient world, and making ancient studies applicable in the modern world. In January 2023, she completed an MSc in Southeast European Studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, writing her thesis on the effects of Islamic iconoclasm on the Hagia Sophia and its impact on cultural heritage policy in Erdoğan’s Turkey. She now serves as the programs & administration coordinator for UCLA’s Pourdavoud Institute for the Study of the Iranian World. In her free time, she enjoys playing tennis, reading, horse-riding, learning foreign languages, traveling the world, and studying transportation/infrastructure issues.

Julie Levy

By All the Wake and Waters!: Language and Worldbuilding in Heaven's Vault

Saturday March 9, 2 pm US Central Time

Let's Play 

Sunday March 10, 4 pm US Central Time

Julie Levy (she/they) is an independent scholar, writer, and activist. She is the Managing Director for the Save Ancient Studies Alliance, and they also run their own YouTube channel called Zylla's Athenaeum - and both heavily feature archaeogaming! She has two higher degrees in ancient Greek and Roman literature and language, and is particularly interested in comparative history, mythology, and linguistics.

Megan Lewis 

Reception of Ancient Mesopotamia in House of Ashes

with Lexie Henning and E.L. Meszaros

Saturday March 9, 12 pm US Central Time

Megan Lewis has a B.A. from Birmingham University (UK) in Ancient History, an M.Phil. from the same in Assyriology, and an M.A. in Near Eastern Studies from the Johns Hopkins University. She attained ABD status in a Ph.D. program at The Johns Hopkins University, before deciding that her energies would be better spent elsewhere. She hopes to return to school and obtain her doctorate at a later date.

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Megan serves on the board of directors for H.A.P.S., and takes care of the day-to-day running of the Digital Hammurabi YouTubechannel and Podcast.

Daniel Maday

History and Mythology

Saturday March 9, 6 pm US Central Time

One Shot, Endless Opportunities: A tabletop workshop for combining TTRPGs and Histories

Sunday March 10, 11 am US Central Time

Daniel Maday is an Industrial Organizational Psychology (work science) researcher and practitioner specializing in strategy, training, simulation, assessment, and gamification. He is an adjunct faculty member at University of Hartford's Masters of Organizational Psychology program teaching coursework on Training, Personnel Psychology, and Experimental Design. Daniel is also a PhD student at the Illinois Institute of Technology focuses on methodology, training, and gamification.  Outside of academia, Daniel works for DDI as a Virtual Classroom Producer, is a board member for The Ozymandias Project, and Producer at Heavy Thought Studios upcoming title The Office Type.

Beyond his formal roles, Daniel is a punster and avid gamer, who loves to design, play, and run DnD and homebrew game systems. For any questions or inquires, please reach out via email to daniel@maday.io

E.L. Meszaros

Reception of Ancient Mesopotamia in House of Ashes

with Megan Lewis and Lexie Henning

Saturday March 9, 12 pm US Central Time

E.L. Meszaros is a Ph.D. candidate in the History of the Exact Sciences in Antiquity at Brown University. Her research focuses on algorithms as a lens for exploring astronomy and scientific cultures in ancient Babylonia and beyond. In her spare time (ha!), she works with a team of media professionals and students on critical making projects and playful engagement with alternate realities focused on ancient history.

Marren MacAdam

TEMPLE OF THE BOUNTIFUL - an ancient TTRPG dungeon adventure

Sunday March 10, 6pm US Central Time

Marren MacAdam (They/Them), the human behind Marren's Musings, is a Canadian TTRPG designer, writer, and aspirant for the title of "most Dark Souls inspired TTRPGs in the scene". They are the creator of LORDSWORN, a GMless TTRPG about soldiers sworn to now dead Gods returning home in the apocalypse, and THE CROWNLESS, a pocketmod series of Zines for an Elden Ring inspired TTRPG of killing Pretender Gods and renewing the world in apocalyptic fire.

Jeremiah McCall

Peasant Farmers: Murder Victims or Crop Producers: How Genres and Historical Problem Spaces Shape the History in Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Hegemony: Wars of Ancient Greece

Sunday March 10, 12pm US Central Time

Gaming the Past: Teaching and Learning History

Through Videogame Analysis and Critique

Sunday March 10, 2pm US Central Time

Jeremiah McCall has a PhD in Roman History and specializes in Historical Game Studies, history pedagogies using video and boardgames and, sometimes, the military and political culture and systems of the Roman Republic. He has taught high school history--his calling--at Cincinnati Country Day School in Ohio for the past 22 years. His book, Gaming the Past (Routledge second edition in 2022) is the foundational work for teaching history using video games as is his website, https://gamingthepast.net/. He has also written a number of investigations of the Roman world: The Cavalry of the Roman Republic (2002); The Sword of Rome (2012), Swords and Cinema (2014), Clan Fabius, Defenders of Rome (2018), and Rivalries that Destroyed the Roman Republic (2022). Currently he is at work researching and writing Designing Historical Games for Classrooms: A Practical Guide for Educators (Routledge 2026?)

Despite his busy teaching and writing schedules, he still manages to play more video games than you'd think he'd have time for.

Dr. Kate Minniti

A Short History Of Mummies In Video Games

Saturday March 9, 10 am US Central Time

Kate Minniti has a PhD in Classical Archaeology. She is also an avid gamer, and since 2013 has been exploring how video games portray archaeology and the past. From 2020 she has been participating in panels and conferences on the reception of antiquity in video games, and has been hosting weekly archaeogaming streams for the Save Ancient Studies Alliance.

Betty Robertson

Whatever Happened to Edutainment?

Sunday March 10, 10 am US Central Time

Betty Robertson is a globally recognized narrative expert. She has given talks for Wordplay, GDC, and last year's H&H. She's worked in every type of gaming medium from AAA to indie to VR. Her name has appeared in the credits of series like Assassin's Creed, Lovelink, and Hardspace Shipbreaker. Most recently, she's been working as a consultant for Netflix Interactive, contributing to the Too Hot to Handle franchise and other exciting upcoming titles.

Samantha Suppes

The Neverending Story of Gilgamesh: Using Dungeons and Dragons to Teach History and Explore Myth

Saturday March 9, 4 pm US Central Time

The Epic of Gilgamesh D&D One-Shot: Humbaba

Saturday March 9, 7 pm US Central Time

Samantha Suppes is a Near Eastern Art and Archaeology PhD student studying the Bronze and Iron Age Southern Levant. She received her undergraduate degree from Johns Hopkins University and her masters degree from the University of Pennsylvania. She has worked at numerous archaeological sites in Israel including Ashkelon, Tel Shimron, Tel Keisan, Megiddo, Qumran Caves, and the City of David.

Meghan Sullivan

How the Underworld Helps the Gaming World: How the Eschatological Beliefs of the Ancient Greeks Can Help Game Developers With Worldbuilding

Sunday March 10, 3:15 pm US Central Time

Meghan Sullivan is the creator and host of History N' Games, an educational series that uncovers the sensational real stories hidden inside popular video games. She has worked in the games industry since 2006 as a writer, curator, on-camera host, podcast producer, and more. Along with history and video games, Meghan also loves pizza, anime, and wrestling.