About Me

Ian here: hey, hello. My professional life is complicated and requires a lot of words to explain (sorry). A full, formal bio appears below these varied and humanizing images of my literal head. If you skip to the bottom a short bio is also available for those looking for a tl;dr. My CV is down there too, if you're into that sort of thing.

In Academia

Bogost is the Barbara and David Thomas Distinguished Professor at Washington University in St. Louis, where he holds faculty positions in the School of Arts & Sciences (Film & Media Studies), the McKelvey School of Engineering (Computer Science & Engineering), and the Sam Fox School of Art & Design (Art, Design, & Architecture).

At WashU, Bogost is also an Assistant Vice Provost, in which role he serves as the founder and Co-Executive Director of the Office of Public Scholarship and a Provost’s Fellow in Interdisciplinary Initiatives, focused on the university's AI + Design effort.

Prior to joining Washington University, Bogost spent almost 20 years on the faculty of Georgia Institute of Technology, where he was appointed in the colleges of liberal arts, computing, design, and business. He has served as a graduate program director, a center director, and a department chair.

Bogost holds a bachelors degree in philosophy and comparative literature from the University of Southern California, and a masters and Ph.D. in comparative literature from UCLA.

In Journalism

Since 2013, Bogost has been a Contributing Editor or Contributing Writer at The Atlantic, the American magazine. There, he has written, edited, and commissioned hundreds of articles on science, technology, health, design, education, culture, politics, and business. Bogost's bylines have also appeared in other publications, among them The New Yorker, New Scientist, Time, The Guardian, The Baffler, Fast Company, and Edge Magazine.

In addition to his own journalistic work, Bogost has received grants from and provided advisement to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. He has also provided consulting in print, television, and radio, for outlets that include The New York Times, The Washington Post, CBS, CNN, WBUR Boston, National Public Radio, and Public Radio International.

In the Technology, Entertainment, and Media Industries

In addition to his academic and writing life, Bogost is also Founding Partner at Persuasive Games LLC, an independent game studio and design consultancy. Before becoming a professor, Bogost worked in the technology industry, in advertising, and in Hollywood.

Through his own company or former employers (which include Oscar-award-winning film-score composer Hans Zimmer's media group), Bogost has made software, games, and websites; or provided design, legal, and business consulting for companies that include 2K Games, Activision, Charter Communications/Spectrum, Cold Stone Creamery, Disney, Chrylser/Jeep, CNN, Domino's Pizza, Hilton, Humana, Kia, Lexus, Mazda, MTV, Nestlé, New Line Cinema, Nintendo of America, The New York Times Company, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Take-Two Interactive, The Tetris Company, Toyota, and Wynn Resorts.

As an Author, Editor, and Publisher

Bogost is the author or co-author of 11 books, including Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames, Alien Phenomenology, or What It's Like to Be a Thing, and Play Anything: The Pleasure of Limits, the Uses of Boredom, and the Secret of Games. His latest book, which will be published in summer 2026, is The Small Stuff: How to Lead a More Gratifying Life.

Beyond his own books, Bogost is also the co-editor of the Platform Studies book series about how computer hardware and software design influences culture, published by MIT Press, and the Object Lessons book series about the secret life of things, published by Bloomsbury.

In the early 2000s, Bogost co-founded a publishing company, Open Texture, that produced educational books, audiobooks, and course materials. Among other things, Open Texture produced a popular ancient Greek course for children, Elementary Greek. The company was successfully sold in the early 2010s to a larger educational publisher.

As a Game Designer and Artist

Bogost’s games about social and political issues cover topics as varied as airport security, consumer debt, disaffected workers, the petroleum industry, suburban errands, pandemic flu, and tort reform. His games have been played by millions of people and exhibited at or held in collections internationally, at venues including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Telfair Museum of Art, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Jacksonville, the Laboral Centro de Arte, and The Australian Centre for the Moving Image.

His independent games include Cow Clicker, a Facebook-game send-up of Facebook games that was the subject of a Wired magazine feature, and A Slow Year, a collection of videogame poems for Atari VCS (2600), Windows, and Mac, which won the Vanguard and Virtuoso awards at the IndieCade Festival and was an Independent Game Festival finalist.

Short Bio

Dr. Ian Bogost is a writer, designer, and scholar of media and technology. He is the Barbara and David Thomas Distinguished Professor and Assistant Vice Provost at Washington University in St. Louis. At WashU, he is appointed in three colleges and the co-executive director of the Office of Public Scholarship.

Bogost is also a contributing writer at The Atlantic and the founding partner of Persuasive Games LLC, a game and design studio. He is the author of 11 books, most recently The Small Stuff: How to Lead a More Gratifying Life. Bogost's award-winning games and artworks, which include Cow Clicker and A Slow Year have been played by millions of people and held in permanent collections around the world, including at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Curriculum Vitae

You can find Bogost's recent CV here (updated approximately once per quarter).