Dr Stella Doukianou

Biography

Dr Stella Doukianou is a Senior Lecturer and Course Leader for BSc Creative Computing at the Creative Computing Institute, UAL. Her research starts from a simple belief, technology should bring people closer, not pull them apart. She works across extended reality (XR), serious games and participatory design, creating immersive experiences with communities rather than for them, with a focus on cultural heritage, social inclusion and environmental justice.
Stella's most recent project is a Knowledge Exchange project, funded through an Innovation Voucher, where she co-designed a serious game with refugees to challenge stigma around the refugee journey through immersive media. She has contributed to EU-funded FP7 and Horizon projects, including OrbEEt and COSMOS, where she worked on gamification and serious games for energy behaviour, and EMOTIVE, where she coordinated the use of AR and emotive storytelling at heritage sites.
Before joining CCI, Stella was a Lecturer in Games Design and Development at the University of Greenwich, teaching Game Development and Virtual Reality Principles, and earlier worked as a Research Consultant designing games for assessment and behavioural change.
Stella welcomes PhD proposals in areas including participatory and co-design methods, XR and immersive storytelling, serious games for social and environmental change, and creative robotics. She currently supervises doctoral research at CCI and holds SEDA certification in research supervision.
She holds a PhD in Computer Science from Coventry University (data visualisation in games) and an MSc in Design and Digital Media from the University of Edinburgh. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA), a Full Professional Member of the British Computer Society (MBCS), and a member of the Computer Arts Society.