State of Play VI: Speakers' Bios

Profile

Dmitri Williams is an assistant professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication, where he is a part of the Annenberg Program on Virtual Communities (APOC). He received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2004. His research focuses on the social and economic impacts of new media, with a focus on online games. Williams was the first researcher to use online games for experiments, and to undertake longitudinal research on video games. He continues to study the psychology of online populations, with projects involving community, identity, sexuality, economics and neuroscience.  In June of 2008, Williams even hosted an academic discussion within the Warcraft world of Azeroth.   Titled "Relationships Between WoW and the Real World," the session was attended by more than 100 people including librarians, economists and psychologists.

He has published in the Journal of Communication, Human Communication Research, the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Communication Monographs and others. His work has also been featured in several press accounts, most recently on NPR, and in publications including the Economist, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Sun-Times and others. Williams testified before the U.S. Senate on video games and served as an expert witness and consultant in two federal court cases.