Ian Russell Lehine

Dissertation

Title: Black Soil Sandbox: The Spatial Lives of Ukrainian Videogames

Supervisor: Antonia Lant

“Black Soil Sandbox” explores the digital and physical spaces of Ukrainian videogames through the lenses of media history, postmemory, eco-media, ludology, and game production. It locates the spaces of Ukrainian games within a history of cine-spatial representation and asks how they play a part in “putting Ukraine on the map”. The project will feature interviews with Ukrainian videogame developers, textual analyses of gameworlds, and a close look at the transnational communities of modders that collectively reimagine those games.

Bio

Ian Russell Lehine (he/him/his) is a PhD Candidate in the Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies at New York University. Ian holds a BA from Occidental College, where he doubled-majored in Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture & Diplomacy and World Affairs. He also holds an MA from KU Leuven's "European Studies: Transnational and Global Perspectives" program, where he minored in Eastern Neighborhood Policy & European Diversity and Cultural Policy.

Ian is a student, a teacher, and a videogame developer. His academic specialties include Film and Media Studies, Videogame Studies, Soviet Media History, and European History. His primary research interests are Ukrainian culture and virtual reality (VR).

Ian is also an avid traveler with a passion for languages and food. He is an enjoyer of Tabletop RPGs.