OUR TEAM
Internal members
MCP and Mintlab
KU Leuven
The Media Culture & Policy Lab (MCP) produces critical scientific research across four domains: journalism and news, strategic communication, human–computer interaction, and media culture.
For the Gam(e)(a)ble project, MCP’s expertise in social media, video games, and interaction design is particularly relevant.
Within MCP, the Meaningful Interactions Lab (Mintlab) specializes in emerging technologies and convergence, online media interactions, and design for and with children. Mintlab collaborates with a wide range of stakeholders through integrated research, design, and dissemination processes that critically examine, envision, and foster technology-mediated interactions that make a meaningful difference in people’s lives.
In the context of Gam(e)(a)ble, MCP and Mintlab collaborate with LUCA School of Arts on WP1, which focuses on media research.
Bieke Zaman
Professor, Project supervisor
Bieke's work lies primarily at the intersection of human-computer interaction research and communication sciences. She is research group leader of the Meaningful Interactions Lab (Mintlab), part of the Media Culture & Policy Lab at the Faculty of Social Sciences, KU Leuven, Belgium.
Rozane De Cock
Professor, Project supervisor
Rozane De Cock is associate professor in Communication Sciences at the Media Culture & Policy Lab at KU Leuven (Belgium) and director of the Brussels Center for Journalism Studies (BCJS, KU Leuven campus Brussels). She is principal investigator of the SBO-FWO Gam(e)(a)ble research project on the blurring lines between gaming and gambling among teenagers. In her research, she studies news production, news use and news effects next to internet use and riskful issues such as problematic gaming and excessive use of social networking sites.
Tim Smits
Professor, Vice-Dean
Tim Smits is a full professor in persuasion and marketing communication at the Media, Information & Persuasion Lab and the current vice dean of education at the KU Leuven Faculty of Social Sciences. His research mainly focuses on persuasive processes and psychological effects in marketing communication targeting children and adolescents. The understanding of these techniques can then be used in policy recommendations, but also in a further test of how these techniques can be applied from a social marketing perspective persuading for healthy or socially desirable behaviors.
Bruno Dupont
Postdoctoral researcher
Bruno is in charge of the overall organization of the project: collaborations, scientific agenda, communication, and valorization. Besides this task, he participates in the media research part of Gam(e)(a)ble through bringing up his expertise in game and media studies, particularly from a semiotic and media education point of view. His research interests include depictions of video games in media, intermedia phenomena, and video game literacy.
Eva Grosemans
Postdoctoral lecturer and researcher
Eva holds a Master in Communication Sciences, a Master in Management and Business Economics from KU Leuven and a PhD in Social Sciences. Her doctoral research, conducted within the Gam(e)(a)ble project, examined the blurring lines between gaming and gambling among adolescents and the role of persuasive communication. With a interest in advertising, marketing, and persuasion, she is now a postdoctoral lecturer and researcher at KU Leuven’s Media Culture & Policy Lab and Meaningful Interactions Lab. Her research examines the blurring of video gaming and gambling, persuasive media, and their effects on adolescents, using quantitative and qualitative methods.
Maarten Denoo
Postdoctoral researcher
Maarten Denoo is a researcher in media and game studies with a focus on the intersection of gaming, gambling, and digital platform design. His doctoral research, conducted within the Gam(e)(a)ble project, examined how gambling-like elements are designed, experienced, and regulated in contemporary video games, with particular attention to loot boxes and monetization practices. Maarten’s work combines qualitative game analysis, survey research, and industry-focused methods, and aims to contribute to both academic debate and public policy on responsible game design.
CiTiP
KU Leuven
The Centre for IT & IP Law is a research center at the Faculty of Law of the University of Leuven, specialized in legal and ethical aspects of IT innovation and intellectual property.
Within Gam(e)(a)ble, CiTiP takes care of Legal Research
Peggy Valcke
Professor, WP lead
Peggy Valcke is vice dean research at the Leuven Faculty of Law & Criminology. She is co-director of CiTiP and principal investigator in the Security & Privacy Department of imec (previously iMinds). She has a broad experience with international and interdisciplinary research - both fundamental and applied - dealing with legal aspects of IT and media innovation. Her current research focuses on the rise of artificial intelligence, in particular algorithmic decision-making, in law enforcement, transport, media services, the judiciary, etc., and the ethical-legal implications thereof, especially in relation to human rights and the allocation of responsibilities / legal liabilities.
Nadia Feci
Doctoral researcher
Working on media law, commercial communication and data protection law. Within the Gam(e)(a)ble project, her doctoral research examines the legal challenges arising from the convergence of gaming and gambling, approached through an audiovisual media lens with a focus on user-generated content creators. They also serve as an independent member of the Flemish Sectoral Council for Media, advising the Flemish Government and Parliament on policy.
Valerie Verdoodt
Postdoctoral researcher
Postdoctoral Fellow at the London School of Economics and an Affiliate Fellow at both CiTiP (KU Leuven) and Law and Technology (Ghent University). Valerie's research interests lie in the fields of Human Rights, IT and Media Law, with a particular focus on children’s rights in the digital environment. At LSE, Valerie teaches ‘Information Technology and the Law’, ‘Digital Rights’, ‘Cyberlaw’ and ‘EU Law’
Martin Sas
Doctoral researcher
Martin is a PhD Student at the faculty of law and criminology of the KU Leuven, supervised of Pr. Peggy Valcke and Pr. Jan Tobias Muehlberg. Funded by the FWO project PROGRRES, his thesis aims at building a rating system, based on EU law, for evaluating privacy risks in digital games, with a specific focus on children. His research covers a broad range of topics, including privacy and data protection regulations, children’s rights in the digital environment, age-appropriate designs, age assurance systems, behavioural profiling, dark patterns, and the risks associated with AI and immersive technologies.
Given the close alignment with his doctoral research, Martin contributed to the Gam(e)(a)ble project as both observer and adviser, particularly on issues concerning the processing of personal data for the personalization of commercial practices associated with randomized rewards
Inclusive Society
UCLL
As a centre of expertise, Inclusive Society employs a participatory and empowering research methodology. It works in co-creation with (vulnerable) citizens, schools, organizations and companies. Inclusive Society researchers always work powerfully and diversity-sensitively.
The centre's projects start from concrete needs, drawing inspiration from national and international models, literature and research.
Davy Nijs
Lecturer
Davy is an orthopedagogue who prefers to identify as a media pedagogue, focusing on the intersection of education and digital technology. He co-founded Digisaurus, supporting parents, educators, and caregivers in media literacy. Within the Gam(e)(a)ble research project, he contributes expertise on media education and digital inclusion. He works at Mediawijs on digital inclusion in the welfare sector, lectures in orthopedagogy at UC Leuven-Limburg, conducts research on digital inclusion, and serves on the board of vzw Link in de Kabel.
Flore Geukens
Postdoctoral researcher
Flore graduated as a clinical psychologist from UGent. After this, she obtained her Ph.D. in Psychology. During this four-year period, she researched loneliness in youth (cognitive, physiological and social processes). Her research at UCLL focuses on how we can make our society more inclusive for all individuals regardless of their gender, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability and so on.
Maya Geudens
Doctoral researcher
Maya has a Master’s degree in Psychological Sciences. She is a clinical psychologist, specializing in adolescents, young adults, and parents of children struggling with problematic gaming behavior. Additionally, she works as a researcher within the Gam(e)(a)ble project. Her focus mainly lies on the prevention of problematic gaming and gambling in youth. In this way she bridges the gap between science and practice.
Developmental Psychology Research Group
UGent
The group pursues two main objectives: gaining an insight in normal human psychological development and examining which factors may affect individuals’ optimal and psychopathological functioning. Its researchers study how the social environment is linked with developmental outcomes. The group has a preference for longitudinal research, suited to map out the complex and dynamic processes of human development. Within Gam(e)(a)ble, the group takes care of the psychological aspects of gaming and gambling.
Bart Soenens
Professor, WP lead
Bart's research takes place at the crossroads of developmental psychology and motivational psychology. He mainly studies parent-child relationship and the role of education in various domains of children's and adolescents' development: identity building, emotion regulation, and personality development.
Lowie Bradt
Doctoral researcher
Lowie graduated in psychology and has a strong interest in human development, motivation and behavioral economics. Within the Gam(e)(a)ble project, he will focus on the role that psychological factors can play in the link between gaming and gambling. A core element in his research is the parent-child interaction.
LUCA School of Arts
LUCA leads on inspiring and facilitating research across visual arts, audiovisual arts, performing arts, music and design. Within LUCA, the research unit Inter-Actions bundles research groups focusing on design and artistic research, and exploring the possibilities of old and new materials, artefacts, media, spaces and events.
For Gam(e)(a)ble, the expertise of the unit in the design of meaningful game and interaction rules will contribute to our Media Sciences objectives.
Steven Malliet
Lecturer and researcher
Steven is active in several artistic research projects that involve the creation of game and interaction rules. His academic research addresses the socio-psychological determinants of digital game play and the methodology of game text analysis. Within Gam(e)(a)ble, he is part of the Media team and co-supervisor of the research line that investigates Dark Design patterns in contemporary games.
Law & Technology
UGent
The fundamental research conducted in the field of Law & Technology aims to answer the acute legal questions raised by the speed and extent to which new technologies are created, used and embedded in professional and private spheres focuses on understanding, interpreting and critically evaluating the legal impact of technology and technology-based or technology-facilitated processes and behaviours, and the potential of technology to facilitate or enrich legal processes or procedures. In both strands of research, a human rights-based and interdisciplinary approach is adopted.
Eva Lievens
Associate Professor
Eva Lievens is Associate Professor of Law & Technology at the Faculty of Law and Criminology and a member of the Human Rights Centre, the UGent Human Rights Research Network, the Crime, Criminology & Criminal Policy Consortium, DELTA, ANSER and PIXLES. A recurrent focus in her research relates to the legal impact of the design and deployment of technology in today’s society, human and children’s rights in the digital environment, and the use of alternative regulatory instruments, such as self- and co-regulation to regulate tech phenomena. Eva teaches ‘European Media Law’, ‘European Law & ICT’, ‘Cybercrime, Technology & Surveillance’, and ‘Data Protection Law’.
Pieterjan Declerck
Doctoral researcher
Pieterjan is affiliated with the department of Interdisciplinary Study of Law, Private Law and Business Law. He obtained the Master of Laws Degree at Ghent University cum laude in 2020, with focus on international trade and environmental law, data protection and IP-law, and EU Law & Technology
His contribution to this interdisciplinary project is to assess the legal framework in which both gaming and gambling operate and how this framework could (better) tackle the related issues in the future.
Affiliated Members
Aaleks Kasemi
Doctoral reseacher - KU Leuven
Aaleks Kasemi is a PhD candidate and teaching assistant at the Media Culture & Policy Lab, including the Meaningful Interactions Lab, at KU Leuven. His doctoral research combines qualitative and quantitative methods to study sports betting behaviour among Flemish adolescents and young adults. Using interviews, longitudinal research, and the Reasoned Action Approach, his work aims to raise awareness and support safer engagement with sports betting and gambling practices.
Ans De Nolf
Postdoctoral researcher - KU Leuven
Ans De Nolf holds a PhD in Social Sciences and is a postdoctoral researcher at KU Leuven, affiliated with the Media Culture & Policy Lab. Her research examines media representations of discrimination and Islamophobia and their impact on public perception and Muslim communities in Belgium. Within the Gam(e)(a)ble research project, she contributes to the valorization activities, translating research insights into societal, policy, and stakeholder-oriented outcomes.
Niels Bibert
Postdoctoral researcher - UHasselt
Niels Bibert is a media and communication researcher who earned his PhD at KU Leuven’s Media Culture & Policy Lab and Meaningful Interactions Lab, where he also worked as a teaching assistant in the Department of Communication Sciences. His doctoral research examined the Belgian sports and esports betting landscape from a deep mediatization perspective, focusing on betting access, motivations, and consumption practices in a highly digitalized media environment.
Elena Petrovskaya
Postdoctoral lecturer - University of Lincoln
Elena is a PhD Researcher at the University of York. Her research focuses on problematic microtransactions in games and their possible effects on player wellbeing. She visited the Gam(e)(a)ble project in December 2022 and is working on ongoing collaborations with the consortium,including a study on developer perspectives on self-regulation.
Leon Y. Xiao
Assistant Professor - City University of Hong Kong
Leon is researching the regulation of loot boxes. He visited the Gam(e)(a)ble project in June 2022 to assess whether the Belgian gambling regulator’s ban on loot boxes was effectively enforced. His contribution to this interdisciplinary project is to assess the legal framework in which both gaming and gambling operate and how this framework could (better) tackle the related issues in the future.
Victor van de Gevel
Former Gam(e)(a)ble visiting scholar
Victor van de Gevel has been a visiting scholar within Gam(e)(a)ble in fall 2023.
His background is in Artificial Intelligence and Human-Technology Interaction.
During his visit, he worked on the development of prevention programs for problematic behaviour regarding the intersection of gaming and gambling.
His research interests include human-AI collaboration, machine creativity, and technology for improving the well-being of people.