About

Kieran Nolan is an lecturer, researcher and designer. He is a member of the Section of Creative Media at Dundalk Institute of Technology (CMDkIT), teaching on the BA (Hons) in Communications and Creative Multimedia, the BSc (Hons) in Computing and Games Development and the BA in Video and Film Production.

He is an external examiner for the Media Communications Department at Cork Institute of Technology and has been a visiting lecturer for the MultiMediaTechnology program at FH Salzburg University of Applied Sciences.

His classes involve both ‘hands-on’ lab based tutorials and critical theory modules in interaction design, project development and the creative and cultural aspects of networked, digital media. He is a keen exponent of using open source hardware and software for learning and teaching, and the creative hacking and re-appropriation of ‘closed’ media platforms.

Kieran co-supervises CMDkIT’s research MA in Alternate Reality Gaming and is a research coordinator on CMDkIT’s summer undergraduate research programme. He is an organiser of the Picteilín Creative Media Conference.

He was awarded an MA in Interactive Media from the University of Limerick in 2002. His thesis project ‘Bionic Roshambo’ explored the symbiotic link between people and technology through hand gesture recognition as an arcade gaming interface. It has featured in games industry magazine EDGE, on Game Developer magazine’s Gamasutra.com and on ArcadeHeroes.com.

He also holds a BDes (Hons) in Digital Media (2001) and a NDip In Design Communications (1998), both from Letterkenny Institute of Technology. His Design Communications final project won the national multimedia graduate award from the Institute of Designers in Ireland/IDI.

Kieran’s design industry experience goes back to the late 1990s. During the first dot-boom he was a design team lead and in-house trainer for e-learning company Educational Multimedia Group. He also worked as a pixel artist and animator for Nintendo development studio Nocturnal Entertainment Australia.

Currently Kieran is studying part-time towards an MA in Learning and Teaching through the Centre for Excellent in Learning and Teaching/CELT at DkIT. His practice-based research in this area was recently cited in the book ‘Learning Through Digital Media: Experiments in Technology and Pedagogy’ by the Institute for Distributed Creativity.

He has presented his research on interaction design, cyberculture, Alternate Reality Games, digital aesthetics and teaching methodologies at the CMDkIT Symposium (Dundalk, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011), International Symposium of Electronic Arts/ISEA (Belfast & Dundalk, 2009), Future and Reality of Gaming/F.R.O.G. (Vienna, 2010), FH Salzburg – University of Applied Sciences (Salzburg, 2011), Ignite! (Dublin, 2011), Picteilín (Dundalk, 2011) and the European Communication Research and Education Association/ECREA Digital Culture and Communication Workshop (Barcelona, 2011).