Alenda Y. Chang is an Associate Professor in Film and Media Studies at UC Santa Barbara. With a multidisciplinary background in biology, literature, and film, she specializes in merging ecocritical theory with the analysis of contemporary media. Her writing has been featured in numerous journals, including Feminist Media Histories, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, the Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds, and Resilience, and her 2019 book, Playing Nature: Ecology in Video Games (University of Minnesota Press), developed innovative ecological frameworks for understanding and designing digital games.
Along with Film and Media Studies professor Laila Shereen Sakr, Chang is also the co-founder of the digital media studio Wireframe (Music 1410). Wireframe was established to support collaborative and cutting-edge research and teaching in new media, with an emphasis on global human rights, social justice, and environmental concerns. Located adjacent to the Digital Arts and Humanities Commons, the studio provides a space for production and critical engagement across media including games, data visualization, installation art, virtual/augmented reality, projection mapping, performance and installation, livestreaming, 3D modeling, mobile apps, and social media.
Chang has most recently co-edited The Routledge Handbook of Ecomedia Studies, which is fully available open access, and contributed writing to Ecogames: Playful Perspectives on the Climate Crisis and the forthcoming Interspecies Future: A Primer.