Arturo Cortez, PhD (he/they)
Faculty Director and Founder of The LiTT Lab Arturo Cortez is an Assistant Professor of Learning Sciences and Human Development and a Fellow of the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado Boulder. Drawing on critical approaches to the learning sciences, Cortez explores the possibilities of co-designing for consequential learning in intergenerational and transdisciplinary learning environments that include young people, educators, researchers, and multiple community members, such as game designers, social media influencers, and content creators. In particular, he is interested in how young people and educators speculate new possible futures, opening up opportunities for building imaginary and real worlds, while using everyday technologies. Cortez’s early commitments to amplifying the everyday practices of youth were jointly-honed and developed while he was a middle school teacher in East Palo Alto and a high school teacher in San Francisco. Cortez holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, an Ed.M. from Harvard University, an M.A.T. from the University of San Francisco, and a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania. |
Mariel Reyes- Galvez (she/they)
Undergraduate Student Researcher | Educator | Designer At the LiTT Lab, Mariel serves as a Research Assistant, Curriculum Developer, and Video Game Developer. Through her exploration of media with secondary students at Empower Community High School, they exercise socio-political imagination through creative mediums. Mari’s students push her to gain a deeper understanding of the intersectionality between our work and the everyday systems in which we participate. Mariel is a gamer, coder, and creative who burns for opportunities to model a better world. Mari also strives to cultivate spaces where learners and educators can center joy as they question the world around them. She is currently an undergraduate at Metropolitan State University Denver majoring in Computer Information Systems. |
Ashieda McKoy, PhD Candidate (she/they)
Graduate Student Researcher | Designer Ashieda is a doctoral student in the School of Education at University of Colorado Boulder. With an emphasis on Learning Sciences and Human Development and Teacher Learning, Research, and Practice,, Ashieda is particularly interested in designing teacher learning environments using an Afrofuturist lens. Specifically, in the LiTT lab they are passionate about how teachers, students, and communities collectively envision new future worlds/learning environments through video games. |
Jade Cortez Vargas (she/her/ella)
Undergraduate Student Researcher Jade was born and raised in Boulder, Colorado and is a first generation Latina. She is currently an incoming sophomore at CU Boulder majoring in Psychology with a minor in Leadership Studies. Jade grew up with video games. While she does not use the label as pro-gamer, she does enjoy a nice distraction when it comes to de-stressing . As part of working on this project, Jade has been able to share her expertise with others and hopes to grow as an educator by sharing with young people in the future. |
Humberto Echevarria Rios (he/him)
Streamer | Content Creator | Archivist | Undergraduate Student Researcher B.B is an online personality created in 2018 as a form of self-expression and self-discovery. (My name is Bert, but everyone calls me BB). Through GTA Roleplay, BB learned to not only accept themselves, but be unapologetically themselves. In doing so, they also discovered their love for roleplay. This sparked a fire inside of them, seeing as this online space fostered inequality, homophobia and seclusion for LGBTQIA+ gamers. Since then, they have moved on to numerous games and learned the power these spaces hold. BB has worked in many projects to continue fostering safe-spaces in the online world since. In addition, BB is an undergraduate at NUC Mayagüez, majoring in Business Administration, with a concentration in Social Media Marketing. |
Edward Rivero, PhD
Faculty Affiliate Eddie Rivero, PhD is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University in the Bilingual/Bicultural Education program. His research examines the linguistic practices, digital literacies, and sociopolitical meaning-making that young people develop through their everyday media and play activities, with a particular emphasis on emergent bilingual youth. Eddie is interested in how teachers can leverage these activities to design culturally responsive and equitable learning ecologies with and for students. He is a former postdoctoral associate with the LiTT Lab. |
José Ramón Lizárraga, PhD
Faculty Affiliate Dr. José Ramón Lizárraga is an Assistant Professor of Learning Sciences and Human Development, and Affiliate in Information Sciences and LGBTQ Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. They also serve as a Senior Advisor with the Algorithmic Justice League. José is currently a Visiting Researcher and Project Manager of O @ BSE (Berkeley School of Education), leading all design, implementation, and research efforts. Dr. Lizárraga is an award-winning designer of online/hybrid learning environments whose internationally-recognized scholarly work focuses on the role of emergent technologies, AI, and media in the learning of individuals and communities. |
Alexis (Lex) Hunter
Graduate Student Researcher | Designer Lex is a PhD student in the Educational Foundations, Policy, and Practices (EFPP) program at CU Boulder. Lex is interested in how marginalized youth leverage technological advances (ex. social media) that dominant society has deemed as purely entertainment to advocate, dream, build community, and engage in healing practices that sustain them in the life-long fight for liberation. |
Tiera Chanté Tanksley, PhD
Faculty Affiliate Dr. Tiera Tanksley’s scholarship bridges education, Black studies critical science and technology studies (STS) to examine how digital and artificially intelligent technologies impact the lives and schooling experiences of Black youth. Her work simultaneously recognizes Black youth as digital activists and civic agitators, and examines the complex ways they subvert, resist and rewrite racially biased technologies to produce more just and joyous digital experiences for Communities of Color across the diaspora. In 2022, Dr. Tanksley received the Emerging Leader in Critical Race Technology Studies Fellowship from UCLA, and in 2023 she was awarded the Op Ed Public Voices in Technology fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation. She received her PhD in Education from UCLA. |