From Invaders (an Indigenous take on the classic arcade game Space Invaders that parallels imagined 8-bit alien invasion with the very real process of colonization in Turtle Island) to Thunderbird Strike (a lightning-searing, talon-tearing attack on oil consumption), Elizabeth LaPensée's games offer alternative gameplay from an Indigenous worldview. She will speak to these games and more with an emphasis on their intentions, self-determined design, inclusive development process, and community-focused distribution in the hopes of reifying sovereignty through games.

LaPensée, Ph.D. is an award-winning writer, designer, and artist of games, comics, transmedia, and animation. She is Anishinaabe, Métis, and Irish, living near the Great Lakes as an Assistant Professor of Media & Information and Writing, Rhetoric & American Cultures at Michigan State University. Most recently, she designed and created art for Manoominike (2016), a motion game about practices of wild ricing, as well as Honour Water (2016), an Anishinaabe singing game for healing the water. She designed and programmed Invaders (2015), a remix of the arcade classic Space Invaders. She also designed The Gift of Food (2014), a board game about Northwest Native traditional foods. She is currently working on Thunderbird Strike, a side-scrolling lightning-searing, talon-tearing attack on oil operations.

Emergent Research events are aimed at better understanding the various types of research undertaken across campus, particularly as they relate to library services and support, opportunities for collaboration, data management and preservation, and beyond.